{"id":1380,"date":"2012-06-26T22:22:59","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T22:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/?p=1380"},"modified":"2012-06-26T22:22:59","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T22:22:59","slug":"secret-best-practices-of-good-every-day-cooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/secret-best-practices-of-good-every-day-cooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Practice Secrets of Good Every Day Cooks"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Good Everyday Cooks Know that Struggling Cooks Don’t<\/h3>\n
\"Picking
Exploring the Louisville Farmers’ Market at our first Market Morning.\u00a0 Here, Kristen Hall talks about\u00a0 she is reformulating all her sauces to use real ingredients–like what you’d have in our own pantry.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For a recent magazine article, Martha Stewart was asked how often she orders take out.\u00a0\u00a0Her response was something like a couple times over the last 15 years.<\/p>\n

How many people are in the “0-5” range for takeout during the last 15 years?\u00a0\u00a0Initially, Martha’s response made me wonder whether she is some kind of freak.\u00a0\u00a0But then it struck me:\u00a0\u00a0I haven’t ordered takeout more than a couple times in the last 15 years either!<\/p>\n

Fact is, there are people “out there” who make healthy, good-tasting meals night after night like it’s no big deal.\u00a0\u00a0What do they know that most people don’t?<\/p>\n

Here’s one big secret:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0They know the difference between healthy and unhealthy convenience foods, and they know how to use healthy convenience to make good meals manageable.\u00a0\u00a0Case in point:\u00a0\u00a0The Honeysuckle Gourmet’s Black Jack Barbecue Sauce we discovered at our first Market Morning in Louisville.<\/p>\n

\"Barbecue
Kristen’s Black Jack Natural <\/a>uses her homemade ketchup to avoid unhealthful ingredients.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How did we know it was healthy?<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0At our Market tour, we got to chat with Honeysuckle’s Kristen Hall.\u00a0\u00a0She explained how she is painstakingly reformulating each of her sauces to use all “real” ingredients, i.e., the same stuff you’d find in your own pantry.\u00a0\u00a0If you could replicate a sauce yourself, you’ve got a healthy time saver.\u00a0\u00a0You’re just paying to have someone else mix all the ingredients.<\/p>\n

What about the cost?\u00a0\u00a0At $7.00 a jar, it’s tempting to write off the sauce as “too expensive.”\u00a0\u00a0But as FORK owner and class participant Christine pointed out, our group of 8 used only a quarter of the jar!\u00a0\u00a0That means I’ve got at least 4 to 6 more meals in that jar for my husband and I.\u00a0\u00a0Which brings us to the third point:<\/p>\n

How do I use the rest of the sauce to make great meals, manageably?<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0This is the key to making condiments cost effective, i.e., finding ways to use them rather than having them waste away on the refrigerator door.\u00a0\u00a0In addition to using the sauce to top saut\u00e9ed chicken breasts at our class, I’ve found two other easy ideas:<\/p>\n

Fast Recipe 1–Slow Cooker Chicken Legs<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0In need of a fast meal that could be prepared in advance, I skinned a couple chicken thighs and legs and plopped them into the slow cooker with 1\/2 cup of sauce.\u00a0\u00a0Eight hours later, I had melt-in-your mouth pulled chicken and sauce that went perfectly over warmed up leftover rice and broccoli.\u00a0\u00a0Fast food couldn’t be faster!<\/p>\n

Fast Recipe 2–Barbeque Chicken Soup<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0A couple days later, the leftover chicken and sauce became the flavor base for a quick, light summer soup with leftover broccoli, potatoes, new carrots from the garden and onion and garlic, of course.\u00a0\u00a0I used another 1\/4 cup of sauce + a little hot sauce for flavor.\u00a0\u00a0Again, faster than fast food–and I still have half a jar of sauce.<\/p>\n

So that’s how good every day cooks make good meals manageable–and delicious.\u00a0 Learn more:\u00a0 Join one of the everyday meal making classes with The New Kitchen Cooking School.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,2,20,19,13,14,1],"tags":[38,59,129,150,284,377],"class_list":["post-1380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-is-healthy-eating","category-healthy-cooking-basics","category-recipes","category-how-to-set-up-a-healthy-pantry","category-local-and-sustainable-eating","category-new-ingredients","category-uncategorized","tag-affordability","tag-barbecue-sauce","tag-convenience-foods","tag-cost-of-good-food","tag-healthy-eating","tag-marthas-stewart","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}