July 23, 2008 - Nutrition in a Can (Not)

I had never sought out good nutrition in the past, but with the books I've read and healthy cooking shows I've watched lately, I've been learning so much about what good food (REAL food) can do for our bodies. It's interesting to me to learn things like there is protein in leafy greens. You all probably knew that, but I am pretty much nutrition-illiterate. If my stomach growls, I eat whatever is near....chips, burgers, fries, candy, etc.

I cannot believe how far Americans (myself included!) have moved away from eating real food. We hear about this all of the time, and we ignore it until we get a cancer (or other) diagnosis and we start asking ourselves, "Was it something I've been eating, drinking, or breathing that caused this?" We go through our days eating anything that's quick and/or tastes good, despite how it may have been prepared or how long it has been on our pantry shelves. And we eat foods that have been sprayed with pesticides and animals that have been fed who-knows-what.

Over the past week or so, our family has been watching episodes of Emeril Green, which is a show on Planet Green where Emeril goes into a Whole Foods Market and helps someone who is stuck in a rut with meal planning or has special dietary needs, etc. He introduces them to all kinds of new foods. Well, they aren't actually new foods, but they are new to them (and to us!). He shows non-fish-eaters what types of fish to buy and how to prepare it (and the folks LOVE the fish), and he prepares things I had never heard of like broccolini, broccoli raub, and quinoa (pronounced keen-wah).

I'm not a cook, but Clayton and Cassie go to town in the kitchen lately. Cassie, at 24, already has quite a cooking background (as her mom is quite accomplished). Clayton and I didn't grow up in families that cooked together, so we don't have a large variety of meals we prepare. Clayton did learn at a nutrition class at our company's Leadership Center that 75 to 80% of your plate should have COLOR, so he focuses on that during meal prep.

Watching those two in the kitchen is great. They get so excited about the meals they are preparing. Here are a couple of pix of some of the recent meals they've prepared. The first one was last night's dinner. It was a bed of quinoa, with broccolini, chicken tenders, sweet pea sprouts, pine nuts, and carrots. The chicken was cooked using coconut oil. We had never used it before, and, man, was it awesome! It was not only healthy, but it was DELICIOUS.

Here's another. This one is meatless, and I don't have to tell you what's in it. Just click on the picture, and you can see it enlarged. YUM.

Just so you know, we are not giving it all up, but we are trying to eat 80 percent healthy and 20 percent a little less healthy for now. It's great. Try it. :-) I feel like I have to make some healthier choices if I want to keep this cancer from coming back.