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Cooking Healthy > 12 Part Health & Wellness Primer
Cooking Healthy – overview
Do you have trouble cooking healthy meals for your family? When it comes to cooking healthy meals for our families, it can be a real challenge. There is always some degree of indecisiveness. The good news is, there are plenty of heath wise recipes that are tasty and slightly camouflaged as comfort foods your family will love.
Healthy cooking is difficult for most people simply because they don’t want to or have time to spend planning and preparing meals. At the same time, we know it’s important to eat healthy so we feel obligated to learn new and improved ways of cooking healthy foods that everyone will enjoy
With weight and nutrition being the underlying cause of so many health conditions it’s impossible to ignore the importance of not only eating healthy ourselves but also teaching our loved ones the importance of doing the same thing. One way to insure that your loved ones are in fact eating healthy is to make sure that you are cooking healthy and nutritious foods for them.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy the occasional splurge or even that you shouldn’t. The key to cooking healthy is learning to control portions and understanding the importance of moderation.
When it comes to including healthy cooking habits into our daily routines, there are more resources available than ever before to help keep you on track. You can seek the services of a professional nutritionist and your doctor can help. There are numerous books and magazines filled with recipes that encourage healthy cooking and eating habits. You can also find all kinds of healthy eating and cooking tips online.
If you truly love to cook, then there is no shortage of recipes that you can try. The really good news is that you can incorporate healthy cooking into your daily routine whether you are cooking for one or a household of ten.
Some argue that cooking healthy food costs more than the so called good for you prepackaged foods that are full of calories and harmful additives. The truth of the matter is when you compare the costs with the medical bills associated with poor health, they seem rather slight by comparison.
Yes, good food costs more. That is a simple fact of life. However, by learning portion control you just may discover that you are actually spending less as you adjust to a healthier diet and a more active lifestyle.
Cooking healthy isn’t an overnight change; it’s a lifestyle change that should be realized gradually over time. You don’t have to go into your kitchen and throw out every little thing that you deem ‘unhealthy’ instead try not to buy more of these items once they’ve been used.
Make wiser decisions when purchasing fats and oils for food preparation and you will discover that you’ve made a vitally important step in the process of incorporating healthy cooking and eating habits in your home.
These small steps will take you towards your long-term goal of cooking healthier meals for yourself and your family. Before you know it you’ll find that you all have more energy and a better sense of overall health than you would have imagined.
Cooking Healthy – having the right tools in your kitchen
How good are the tools in your kitchen? There is nothing in the world that can quite compare to cooking with the finest, freshest ingredients and this can only be enriched by using the right tools for the job. While you don’t need every fancy, expensive gadget on the market, you do need some good quality essentials.
When it comes to pots, pans and skillets you should keep in mind that conductivity is extremely important. Your pots and pans should be made of a heavier gauge. This allows your pans to even heat and eliminates hot spots, which that may cause sticking or scorch during the cooking process.
Kitchen knives are also important. If you will be preparing a lot of meals in your kitchen, the quality of your knives will be a great investment. If you’ve tried to prepare foods with of inferior knives, you understand just how important it’s to buy well-balanced high quality knives for your kitchen.
Make sure you test the handles in your hand to see how they feel before making a purchase. If you do a lot of chopping, you’ll want to make sure that the knives feel comfortable in your hands.
If you’re a meat eater, then you should also invest in a jacquard. It is a very useful tool for tenderizing meat. It also pierces the surface so that rubs and marinades can penetrate for a more flavorful dish. This is by far one of my favorite kitchen gadgets and it isn’t a big investment for the value it provides.
A good quality grater is another tool that no kitchen should be complete without. There are many who believe that with all the pre shredded cheese products on the market this tool is obsolete but nothing could be further from the truth.
First of all, pre grated and prepackaged cheese simply doesn’t even touch the flavor quality that freshly grated cheese provides. Second, cheese isn’t the only thing that these graters are useful for grating. They are excellent for grating citrus fruits, spices, garlic, chocolate, and even onions.
A good nonstick rice cooker is a very handy and inexpensive tool. You just measure the rice and water and let the machine go to work and it’s not just for rice, you can throw in some vegetables, spices, and broth to make a quick and flavorful one-pot meal. You can get a small 3-cup cooker and it will produce manageable-sized portions and even keep the food warm after it’s done.
A couple of good quality non-stick mats. Silicone mats are fantastic. You can use them to roll dough and it doesn’t stick, bake tasty treats that don’t burn and the clean-up is a breeze. No soaking or scrubbing required.
Of course there are many more tools than I can mention here. There are all kinds of appliances that you can try to make your time in the kitchen easier and more enjoyable. It all really boils (bad pun) down to personal preference.
My best advice is to purchase the best possible quality you can afford and gradually replace your cooking equipment one piece at a time and you won’t feel such a strain on your budget.
Cooking Healthy – low fat cooking tips for the whole family
When you are learning to eat and cook healthier you should also try to reduce the amount of fat in your diet. While you may be picturing yourself eating nothing but cardboard-like food think again. With a few simple tips you can cook tasty low-fat food the whole family will enjoy.
The first thing to remember is, don’t cut out all fats. This is a common mistake that is not only unhealthy it often leaves you feeling deprived. The human body needs fat because some vitamins, such Vitamin D, are fat soluble, which means you won’t absorb them without the presence of fat. So make sure you include some healthy fats, such as olive oil, in your recipes.
Look in your fridge and see what high-fat foods you can replace. That way, you’ll have low-fat versions on hand for cooking. Dairy products are especially easy to find in low to no-fat versions. Health experts recommend low-fat rather than fat-free for dairy products, because your body will have a hard time absorbing the Vitamin D in dairy products without some fat.
Chicken, beef, and vegetable stock also come in fat-free versions, which are convenient to have on hand for all sorts of dishes. You can also use the broth to sauté instead of oil.
Keep your kitchen stocked with lean beef, poultry, and fish. In addition, fatty fish is a good source of healthy fats, so you can always keep some salmon or Arctic char on hand, too.
Learn how to bake, broil, steam, and poach foods instead of frying them. For sautéing, you can use broth instead of oil, or use the sauté as a chance to get some healthy oil into your diet.
Use non-stick cookware. While old-fashioned cast iron cookware may be durable, it requires more “grease” than non-stick cookware. In fact, you need to keep cast iron oiled for it to perform well. Using non-stick cookware allows you to cook foods without a lot of added fat to prevent sticking. Use cooking spray instead of oil or butter. If cooking spray is not an option, use liquid oils instead of solid fats.
Choose low-fat substitutes. Did you know that fruit purees, particularly prune and apple can replace some of the fat in many dishes? Especially baked goods. The same can be said for plain yogurt. Try replacing a half to three-fourths of the fat in a recipe with low-fat, plain yogurt.
You should always keep plain low-fat yogurt on hand. Did you know you can strain it to make a cream cheese-like texture, or use it as a sour cream substitute in many dishes. It can also be used in place of heavy cream to thicken sauces.
When shopping for groceries choose lean cuts of meat, skinless chicken breasts, and try to trim all the visible fat from meat. Instead of frying, use other cooking methods such as grilling, broiling, baking, braising, poaching and microwaving foods. When you must sauté, use small amounts of oil or broth instead.
Cooking Healthy – the transition to eating and cooking healthier food
Making the transition to eating healthier is one of the best decisions you can make your yourself and your family. However, it can be hard to know where to start. You might be concerned about how you’re going to feed your family this way, and how they will feel about it. You might have cost concerns, or children who are picky eaters.
What’s more, you may not even be sure what foods to are good really healthy or ones that deceptively disguised as healthy. You also have to decide whether you want to switch gradually or throw everything out and start over. Let’s go over a few tips that can help you on your way to transitioning into a healthful diet.
– Do your research
First, it pays to take a little time to research. Look for consistencies in food information – this will help you avoid “fad diets.” Find out what really makes a food healthy, and decide what food groups you are going to keep or discard (some people decide not to include dairy in their diets, for example, or they will lean toward a primitive diet that does not include grains).
– Make a chart
Once you are comfortable with what constitutes a healthy food, you can make a chart. This can be so helpful in making out grocery lists and planning meals, and in making the transition in general. To make the chart, you will need two basic columns. If you are concerned with other aspects of your diet, such as glycemic index and nutritive value, then you might want more columns.
On one side of the chart are the foods you normally eat. On the other side, put a replacement. For instance, you might have doughnuts on one side; you can put whole wheat cinnamon toast on the other side as a replacement.
If you aren’t sure what to replace with a healthier alternative, a good rule of thumb is: replace white with brown, artificial with natural, and processed for whole. For instance, traditional pasta can be replaced with whole grain pasta; fruit snacks can be replaced with natural dried fruit; and potato chips with organic snacks.
Health experts agree that when switching to a healthier eating plan you’ll want to make the transition gradually because is less shocking to your system. You’ll also want to increase the amount of food you eat. Why this may sound like a bad idea it really helps.
If you load up on healthy food, you may simply not want the unhealthy stuff. Making a point of eating lots of high-quality, whole foods will theoretically leave less room for the bad stuff – and this is true for your grocery budget as well. Some find this makes for an easier transition than cutting out unhealthy foods and feeling deprived.
Cooking Healthy – taking a cooking class to help improve your skills
If you are looking to improve your cooking skills or want to learn how to cook, check out what classes are available in your local area. Surprisingly few people manage to utilize the many wonderful opportunities that are available to them when it comes to cooking classes.
If you are considering a cooking class, you should be glad to know that many communities offer them for a nominal fee at night and sometimes on the weekend. These classes are rather basic and often designed to help women learn the basics of a few economical and healthy meals to prepare for their beginning families. If you fit the bill for this, then you should check out your local library for possible leads for these sorts of classes in your area. Even if they don’t have the information available it’s quite likely that they can point you in the right direction.
If you are looking for cooking classes that you can take with your children, check out your library once again for the first resource. There are also many gourmet food shops that offer cooking classes for parents to take with their children. This is a great opportunity to bond with your child while you both learn to prepare a new dish or two together. It’s quite likely that you will be quite surprised by the things you can learn from your child as well as the things you can learn by simply taking the class.
For those among us who are seeking culinary experience with very specific cuisines you will have to search a little more for the perfect cooking classes in which you can achieve your goal.
They do exist however, though your chances of learning Thai cooking are much greater in a larger city than in smaller towns throughout the country. If you are really interested in learning some exotic cooking techniques perhaps you should consider a vacation in which you can try out a few new cooking classes while you are there.
If you prefer other things on your vacation to cooking you could make a point of attempting one basic class in the cuisine of your choice for each vacation you take. This will give you a little more than the same old souvenir to bring back from your trip and an experience that in many cases is quite memorable.
Finally, if you are looking for a romantic idea, how about signing up to take a couples cooking class? Believe it or not, these classes are often offered in both big and smaller cities. They seem to be all the rage around Valentine’s day, perhaps the hint is that the other partner in a relationship can share some of the cooking responsibility or perhaps the idea is that there is more than one way to steam up the kitchen.
Regardless of the reason for taking cooking classes they can bring not only a great deal of enjoyment to your dining room, but also increase your ease in your kitchen. If you’ve never taken a cooking class, there is no time like the present to do so. There is always something new to learn in the kitchen.
Cooking Healthy – cooking gluten free
In this day and age people have many dietary restrictions. One restriction that is gaining some degree of notoriety in recent years is the need for a gluten free diet. Gluten is a substance that is commonly found in flour products that a decent sized portion of the population has a negative reaction to in some form or another. For these people, gluten free isn’t a choice it’s absolutely necessary.
Gluten free cooking imposes many restrictions and often makes it difficult to enjoy somethings that the majority of us take for granted, like dining out. The good news for those who require gluten free cooking is that more and more restaurants are beginning to acknowledge this condition and offer some selections that are gluten free. It takes time, just as it did with low carb craze for the demand for these products to make it worth the industries while to make adjustments in their way of preparing foods.
It can be frustrating finding tasty foods and combinations for cooking without falling into a rut of the same old foods that you know you can eat without worry. It’s important to consider gluten free cooking a challenge rather than a chore. When you do you’ll find that the process is much more enjoyable. You might even find that you appreciate the meals you’ve worked hard to prepare even better because of the great sense of accomplishment.
There are many resources available for those who need to eat gluten free foods. There are even more and more ‘convenience’ or prepackaged foods that are designated for gluten free cooking. This means that those who once had no option but creating meals from scratch do now have the occasional shortcut available to them. We are even finding cookie and cake mixes that are now gluten free in order to enjoy some of the finer things in life for those who would have been completely deprived only a few short years ago.
Changes are being made and resources are being shared through the Internet that help not only adults that require special gluten free cooking and diets but also support for the parents of children who must have gluten free diets. Cooking for children in the best of circumstances is often difficult. It’s even more difficult when there are excessive dietary restrictions that often eliminate the possibility of our children enjoying childhood favorites. That is why it’s so important to seek out the many resources and recipes that are available for gluten free cooking.
If you require a gluten free diet and have no idea where to start or what you should be cooking, you should check out websites and blogs online that discuss the gluten restrictions, issues and dietary needs you face. You will probably be amazed at the wealth of information available. Also, if you have a Trader Joes or Whole Foods store in your area, most of them either offer or will order gluten free products for your cooking needs.
Gluten free cooking doesn’t have to be the chore many of us think it must be and all gluten free food doesn’t taste like cardboard. Take the time to get to know the wonderful gluten free recipes that abound and incorporate them one at a time into your cooking repertoire. There are some wonderful recipes out there and you will feel great.
Cooking Healthy – eating healthy on a budget
If you’ve tried to buy healthy food at the grocery store, you might have been put off by the price. After all, organic apples are so much more expensive than conventionally grown ones, and whole grain snack crackers cost more than white soda crackers.
But those price comparisons are not the whole picture maybe whole grain snack crackers cost more than white ones, but have you compared that to the price of a bag of flour, from which you could make your own snacks? Sometimes you have to rethink the way you view food prices to really get the healthiest food for the best price.
Here are some tips on how you can buy and eat healthy food even on a small budget.
First of all, keep in mind that “Cheap” food isn’t always as cheap as you think. Say for instance, your favorite brand of potato chips is on sale for $3 a bag, and you have a coupon! But before you gloat about your good deal, have you checked the price of a 3-lb bag of organic potatoes? They may be on sale for $2.50, and guess how many more potato dishes you can make from that bag than you can from a bag of potato chips.
The same goes for nearly all processed foods. They may seem cheap, but buying the whole, healthy version is often cheaper. Think of it this way: instead of buying completed, processed foods, buy ingredients instead. Rather than buying two loaves of bread, buy a bag of whole wheat flour for the same price (or less) and make far more than two loaves.
Overall, whole foods are cheaper than processed, prepackaged ones, and the whole foods are generally sold along the outside edges of the average grocery store. In the center of the store, you’ll find cereal, candy, bread, canned foods, and so forth; along the edges you’ll find produce, meat, and dairy. The exception to this might be whole grains and dried beans many stores stock their whole grain flours and dried beans in the center aisles.
When it comes to budgeting your groceries, you may find that meat takes up a big chunk of the budget. However, replacing meat with processed meat substitutes (such as tofu burgers) is not particularly cost-effective. Instead, consider replacing meat with other protein sources, such as brown rice and beans. Blocks of tofu tend to be very inexpensive as well, and are considered healthful meat substitutes.
Buying foods in season can save a lot of money, and some health experts claim your body processes seasonal foods better. Buying local foods helps, too, and stocking up on favorites when they are in season and preserving them yourself can save a lot. Canning, freezing, and drying seasonal fruits and vegetables helps boost your diet in the winter months, and it’s easier on your budget.
Cooking Healthy – how to make healthy lunches simple
How many of us put cooking at the top of our priority list? In fact, far too people have made learning to cook a priority in their lives. This means that we often exist on convenience foods and boxed mixes rather than taking the effort to prepare healthy meals for our families and our own personal enjoyment.
The same holds true for lunches when we often resort to a can of soup or box of macaroni and cheese or some other such product rather than putting our creative efforts into making a quick and easy yet delicious lunch. You will see many ideas in this article and the hope is that these ideas will not only get you off to a great start for ending the lunch rut we all seem to find ourselves in at some time or another but also to try new things on your own.
First of all, not all great lunches require actual cooking in order to prepare. Some of them will require the use of the microwave and some of them will need to be cooked or at least prepared beforehand and reheated. The choices are virtually limitless once you understand the creative concept that must be in place. You should also find that many of these ideas are so simple you will wonder why on earth you have never thought of them. I certainly hope that some of these ideas will become main features within your own home.
Lettuce wraps. These mike delightfully delicious lunch treats and the filling can be prepared ahead of time, which leaves only reheating the filling and wrapping when you’re ready to eat. This is a fun lunch to share with your little ones and it teaches them that lettuce is much more versatile than people often give it credit for being. Some people choose to go with a teriyaki inspired filling; my family likes taco inspired fillings for our lettuce rolls. You are perfectly free to come up with a favorite filling of your very own.
Try sandwiches with different breads. Believe it or not, my children love trying new things. It’s a rare trait for which I am extremely grateful. Believe me I understand all too well how fortunate I am.
My youngest however, has a little difficulty with thick or crusty bread. Her favorite sandwich choice has become Hawaiian sweet rolls. We put the meat, cheese, mustard, and pickle in her roll as if it were a bun and she’s thrilled. Other great ideas include hollowing out crusty rolls and filling them with roast beef and cheddar.
You can broil this in your oven for a few minutes for a rare sandwich treat. The cooking part is very minimal and you don’t have to have in depth knowledge of anything to prepare or enjoy these simple treats. Other great bread ideas include croissants with ham and cheese or chicken salad, taco pitas (another great favorite in our household), and paninis (this works really well if you have a George Foreman grill or a panini press).
While this is by no means the end all be all guide to cooking quick and easy lunches it’s good food for thought. Now you know some simple things to make your family a healthy lunch without taking too much time.
Cooking Healthy – heart healthy cooking
When thinking about heart disease, we know that a change in diet is often needed. In today’s world of fast and convenient foods, people think more of saving time than saving calories and fat. If we can be just a little bit more conscious about what we are eating, then we can greatly reduce our risk of heart disease in the future.
One of the best ways we can change up our recipes to make them healthier is by restricting our use of solid fats like butter, bacon, and gravies. These are known as Saturated and Trans fats. We often use these fats to help prepare the food we cook. Some great low-fat alternatives are olive oil, yogurt, and fresh fruit. Try to also be label-conscious and read the contents.
Look for ingredients like polyunsaturated fats found in nuts and seeds and monounsaturated fats found in canola and olive oil. Be wary of the boxes labeled “reduced fat” though as they often still contain the bad fats.
Something else we can do is to choose meats that are lower in fat. Fish is always a healthy choice and most even contain the heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids our bodies need. These omega-3 fatty acids can actually reduce our levels of triglycerides. Lean cuts of pork, beef, chicken breast and turkey are also great choices. Beans and other legumes are a wonderful meat alternative, while still providing our bodies with needed protein. Soy and tofu have become popular in recent years also adding to the meat alternatives list.
The largest dietary change we can make is adding more fruits and vegetables. Many Americans do not even eat half of the servings the food guide recommends as it is not convenient. Fruits and vegetables are chock full of vitamins and minerals, the things we need each and every day.
Soluble fiber is often found in fruits and vegetables and is an excellent source for reducing our cholesterol levels. Fruits and vegetables have also been proven to help reduce heart disease. By snacking on these tasty treats, we are less likely to snack on something higher in fat.
It is easy to keep fruits and vegetables in the fridge ready for snacking as most just need a quick rinse in water and we can munch away. Sometimes even keeping vegetables such as carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower already cut up in the fridge or a bowl of fruit on the counter makes it easier for us to grab and go if we are in a rush.
Whole grains, as found in bread and pasta, are another great dietary change we can make to help our heart. Choosing 100% whole wheat breads and pastas gives us the nutrients we need that we cannot get from other foods. We also need to be aware of our salt intake. Salt is a huge heart enemy resulting in higher cholesterol levels. Processed foods often have added salt, so by choosing fresher foods, we are cutting our salt intake.
By adding more of these foods to our diets on a daily basis, not only are we reducing our risk of heart disease, but an added side effect is weight loss!
Cooking Healthy – cooking healthy meals for children
Cooking for children presents a whole new set of challenges in the kitchen. While you want to provide them with those ever so important nutrients, it’s often difficult to get them to eat those foods that are best for their growing bodies. We are all probably well aware of the food pyramid and the number of servings our children need of healthy grains, proteins, fruits, vegetables, and calcium products. Getting them to eat these nourishing meals is another matter altogether.
The good news when cooking for children is that you don’t necessarily need to incorporate all the important nutrients into dinner food. The truth of the matter is that raw cucumbers, which are thinly sliced and sprinkled with salt make a much healthier snack than potato chips and many little ones love this for a snack.
You get a vegetable in their system and they are getting a treat at snack time. The same holds true for melon and cantaloupes. These make excellent snacks and are a much-needed fruit in these important diets for little ones.
When it comes to cooking for little ones, however man, woman, and child cannot live on macaroni and cheese alone. It’s been tried and tested and failed miserably. Try mixing things up whenever you can while keeping meals kid friendly. It’s important that you try to introduce whole grains, proteins, and vegetables whenever possible at meal times around your home. The good news is that there are many prepackaged convenience foods that are introducing whole grains like never before in order to meet the growing demand of consumers for healthier meals that can be prepared with little fanfare or fuss.
Cooking healthier meals for kids is now easier than ever before. Fresh fruits and vegetables are best whenever possible. However, if you cannot manage fresh, you should avoid canned (fruits especially as they are often swimming in sugary sweetness) whenever possible. Frozen is far preferable to canned when it comes to both fruit and vegetables, as there are often fewer additives.
If you need some great meal ideas that are kid friendly and easy on the budget, you can often find recipes readily available online. You can meet your child’s calcium and dairy product needs by adding milk as the drink of choice for meals or a slice of cheese melted over their favorite vegetable. Ice cream, yogurt, and pudding also make excellent calcium rich treats, in moderation of course.
Encourage your children to try new things rather than cooking the same few meals over and over again that you know they are likely to eat. This prevents two things from happening. First of all, it helps you not to get bored when cooking for your children. Second, it allows your children to try new flavors and textures and form opinions about them. By trying new things, they will learn not only about the things they dislike but also the foods they really enjoy.
You should also keep in mind that your children are people too when cooking for them. Just as you have foods you like and dislike they also will develop tastes over time. Those tastes may also change in time as well.
It’s frustrating, to spend time and money preparing a meal only to have your child push the plate away and refuse to even try the meal. For this, I recommend enlisting their help in the kitchen. Children are much more likely to eat the things they had a hand in preparing as a matter of accomplishment and pride. It’s psychological warfare I know but all is fair in war and dinnertime.
Perhaps the greatest gift you can give yourself (much greater than the help in the kitchen) by ‘forcing’ your little ones to help prepare dinner is that they will learn to better appreciate your culinary efforts and eat peacefully rather than sullenly. This tactic has met with great success in my household when cooking for little ones. And I know you will be successful as well.
Cooking Healthy – creating healthy meal plan
One of the most important things to keep in mind when you’re evaluating healthy meal plans is moderation. It’s very unlikely that any menu that’s truly healthy will go to any extremes. It should stress moderation in all things, not just in the balance of food eaten but in the amounts, too.
For instance, some diets that are marketed as healthy eating plans make claims that should alert you to their problems. A diet that says you can eat unlimited amounts of almost anything probably isn’t really all that healthy. One extreme example is a low-carbohydrate diet. Many low-carb diets can be healthy for certain people. But a few of the low-carb diets entice people to try them by talking about how you can eat all your favorite foods.
These supposedly healthy eating plans claim you can eat cheeseburgers, steaks, cheesecakes and a variety of other foods. And often they’ll say that you can eat all you want of these foods and still lose weight. They’re operating on the assumption that you’ll eat one or two cheeseburgers (without bread, of course), be full and stop. But they do make the claim that you can eat all of them, essentially all the fat, you want and still lose weight.
That should be a signal to you that something’s wrong. No diet that allows all the fat you want to eat can be truly healthy. And if it allows unlimited amounts of saturated fat in particular, it’s probably unhealthy. Other healthy eating plans you’ll see advertised go the opposite direction and limit the amount of fat you can eat down to almost none, while allowing almost any kind of bread, pasta, and other foods like low-fat cookies and desserts that contain a lot of simple carbohydrates and sugar.
While low-fat cookies or cakes might be a nice treat on a low-fat diet now and then, they certainly can’t be eaten all the time. That would make the sugar content of the diet decidedly unhealthy. But that ability to eat low-fat sweet treats is often what’s used to convince people to follow the diet, because they can still have sugar and desserts.
When you’re judging healthy eating plans, checking what’s allowed on the diet is important. But checking what isn’t allowed is important, too. Moderation works both ways. A diet that tells you that you must give up coffee completely or never again eat any kind of bread is taking that limitation to the extreme. And if you like coffee or bread and still intend to have them at least now and then, each time you do you’ll feel like you’re cheating. No one wants to have bad feelings about what they’re eating or drinking.
Choosing from among the diets out there can be daunting. Choose a plan that doesn’t necessarily forbid you from eating anything, and doesn’t allow unlimited amounts of anything, either. Choose from among the more moderate healthy eating plans, and you’re more likely to find the healthiest one for you.
Cooking Healthy – cooking for vegetarians
There is a different method of cooking for a vegetarian lifestyle. You can also find out the nutritional value in your diet. Many people may not find vegetarian cooking as interesting as the non-vegetarian cooking. There are different methods and styles of preparing vegetarian food as well. All the various means will hence increase your interest in the vegetarian preparation. The simple thought of vegetarian cooking can thus make cooking really interesting.
You can definitely find versatility in vegetarian foods. You can also prepare them in a number of different ways. The best example is to slice up an eggplant into thick portions of about an inch. Then you can make it more creative by layering them with parmesan and ricotta. Special use of mozzarella cheese for vegetarian lasagna is the best example.
Take eggplant and add a small amount of bread crumbs to it and always fry it in olive oil. Olive oil has less fat containing elements and that is good for health as well. Green salad should be consumed because it has great nutritional value. The level of nutrition you can get from vegetarian food will have the capacity to suffice your requirements. Egg burgers should also be tried as a part of vegetarian diet. The protein part from eggs gives lot of strength to the body.
Usage of spices should be given emphasis because spices can make or break the taste. After the dish is prepared you should try and sprinkle some asparagus to add more taste to the dish. You can try butter spray to get an amazing taste. If you want to experience some tangy twist you can try spritz broccoli which is steamed with a dash of lemon juice to add flavor.
You have to think outside the box if you want to do some vegetarian cooking. There are exciting ways to make things interesting. Cooking needs a lot of innovation and great cooks of the world believe that there are ten thousand unique dishes that can be prepared by using all the vegetables available in the world.
The treatment of tomato can do wonders. Tomato is an excellent vegetable and you can experiment many different dishes by using tomatoes. If you like cheese, then you can top the tomato with different kind of cheese to add taste to the preparation. Tomato gives unique and defined taste to any vegetarian dish. You can innovate several types of dishes by using tomatoes. When you have so many options open by using a single vegetable imagine the range of varieties if you explore more vegetables.
Just utilize your creative instincts and you can create wonders with vegetables. Once you become a vegetarian you will fall in love with the vegetables. Living with fewer options is not advisable because you will get bored of eating same dish again and again. Meatless options can make you forget meat. When you have researched well and explored options then you will definitely encourage vegetarianism.
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