Part One | Part TwoPart Two
By: Jean Johnson for Reflux1
In part one of this series Reflux1 explored how eating right for health conditions, weight problems, or even simple nutritional concerns, could be approached by taking meal preparation out of the hands of corporate companies and doing it yourself at home. Now instead of exploring what to eat, we’ll advise you on how to get cooking.
Cooking as a Survival Skill – Getting Started at Home
I’ve got a gorgeous cookbook here on my desk that I checked out from the library. It takes you through the seasons and everything, offering great recipes for using things that are fresh in spring, summer, fall, and winter. Also in the living room are stacks of cooking magazines that have been arriving on my doorstep as I’ve developed a food consciousness over the years. They all have such great ideas and gorgeous photographs of picture-perfect meals set on tables laid just so.
| Take Action |
Cook for your health this summer
Summer’s a great time for pasta salad. To heighten the health factor in these cool suppers, we offer the following tips:
Try a whole grain like brown rice, quinoa, tabouli (bulgur), or whole grain pasta instead of white pastas made from refined flour.
Follow the lead of Mediterranean cooks and go for a high ratio of veggies to starch. (Think Jordanian tabouli where there is easily as much parsley in the dish as bulgur.)
Make the dish ahead of time and have it waiting in the fridge when you come home. (This works great for cabbage slaws too – salads that go so well with fish tacos, another dish that’s a snap on a weeknight with some poached fish and warmed corn tortillas – and maybe even a little dill weed and fresh lemon.)
Remember that while all the niceties in the fancy recipes are great and do much to enhance the flavors of dishes, a very good meal can be had with simply prepared ingredients that are at hand in most thoughtfully-stocked kitchens – a feat that happens almost without a person realizing it once they start making cooking great grub for family and friends a regular habit.
|
Therein lays the problem as far as I’m concerned. The people who put these things together do it for a business. It’s their job to cook and experiment and shop. Also, the recipes are written up like science experiments, something that did not even happen until the first cookbooks started insinuating themselves into American kitchens at the turn the 20th century. Prior to then – and even after if the cook was more stubborn and clung to tradition – it was “I can’t really give you the recipe since I just use a pinch of this and a handful of that.”
So the issue is how to go about reclaiming the right to cook good food without either having to quit your day job or hop in a time machine back to granny’s era. More, like any real issue, while the answers are simple, they aren’t easy.
Instead of kicking back tonight, we tell ourselves, we’re going to open one of the magazines or watch a cooking show and make a list of things to get next for a healthy recipe time you’re at the store. Or if that seems too hard, maybe we’ll call a friend and ask how she makes stir fry that doesn’t wind up a soggy bunch of yuck. Then again, maybe we’ll just wing it, and decide ahead of time that if the meal’s a flop at least it’s healthy and the next time around will be better.
All those approaches can work and probably will work if we go at them gradually enough to keep from feeling overwhelmed. There is one aspect of cooking that’s often overlooked though, which we thought might really put a positive spin on things.
Your Kitchen, Your Cutting Board
That’s right – the cutting board. Basically you gotta have a big one. One that’s out all the time. One where you can easily sweep up all the stuff that will inevitably fall on the floor and make such a mess of things.
Because that’s a big part of the home cooking situation – using fresh ingredients is messy. Chopping up cauliflower to go in a salad, for example, or even grating a carrot. Little bits and big ones are bound to fly like unruly electrons. That’s why the cooking shows do such a disservice to us all when they use those little bowls of already-prepped garlic and chopped green pepper and what not.
So, therein – we suggest – lay the real conundrum of cooking. Not that we don’t know how to do a decent stir fry or realize that garlic and ginger are the main aromatics that go into the hot oil for starters. Hence even as we’ve built bigger than ever kitchens will all the latest appliances and gadgets and lovely dinnerware, we mainly use the microwave to heat stuff up and open packaged items for a baking tray. State-of-the-art kitchens are there, but no one’s home. No one has quite realized that cooking really is a survival skill – a wellness skill.
We’re talking food here. Good food. For once being healthy sounds like fun.
It’s taking a handful of flat leaf parsley and chopping it fine to go into some garbanzos along with minced garlic, olive oil, and red wine vinegar. It’s chopping up a fat tomato in the peak of the season as a condiment. Pulling together a great green salad. Pouring the wine. Getting out the Greek olives and a fresh whole wheat baguette – or making your own silver dollar-sized whole grain pancakes to use as bread instead of running to the bakery.
Sound good? Easy enough? Like the pounds could come off after all and the clarity of mind improve? We thought so. We know so. Here’s to a great dinner at home tonight right where the heart is and those you cherish most.
