Steamed, Grilled, Baked…WLS cooking 101

The latest change to our diet has been very noticeable, and yummy! Although, I’m not in the habit of taking pictures, maybe in the near future I should. In the mean time here are some tips I’ve learned in the last year of being abroad, teaching my family to choose healthy choices, and eating tons of fruits and veggies, and meat and bread.

• Oil. What are you cooking with? Olive is ok, Vegetable and butter is crap. Have you tried Coconut oil. It sucks for pan cooking, but if you use it in place of oil for baking, or other non-stovetop items – it works. It burnes quickly, and is in a solid state until it reaches 76 degrees. (I guess my house is always warm). It’s supposed to be the healthiest oil because it doesn’t convert to fat like the others. It also makes you think Island time….

• Grilling. That’s nothing new, Texans do it all the time. But what type of meat are you choosing? “natural” chicken at walmart? um. yes, it came from a bird, but that bird had anti-biotics, growth hormones, and shitty living conditions. Beef… Have you ever heard of a skinny cow… now think about the FAT cow you’re eating… think about what it really is going into your body – hormones, anti-biotics… residues… makes me wonder if because our meats have been tainted with hormones – could those be getting into our bodies, causing us to be FAT, causing our children to go into puberty early, and get fat just because the growth hormones are out of wack. Yuck. We’ve started eating grass fed beefs, and paying about $1 more per LB for no hormone meats, but buying less, and eating more veggies to compensate for the less meat.
• Steaming. I got a food steamer! Yeah! no added salt, just clean cooked veggies. Frozen, fresh, everything. Meat, eggs, apples, fish, lobster, shrimp, turkey, chicken, fajitas…. The only thing I’ve over cooked was broccoli. It’s great.
  
• Creams. I’m stuck on creams/dairy/cheese/milk based products. My mind says – cut them out. My body says… feed me… feed me… oh and don’t skimp on the crappy fat free yogurt…. neither walmart or target sell any full fat yogurt (ok maybe the baby yogurt) but along came the Greek God Yogurt…. my body says – feed me!
  
  We also keep milk in the house because well, we have two children. They technically don’t need to eat dairy, as they are given calcium supplements and eat a range of foods that have calcium – like broccoli, and ice cream. decisions, decisions.
• Drinks. Water thank you. We keep water in the fridge (not bottled water), we keep coffee and tea available… and the kiddos have fresh squeezed not from concentrate (minimal sugar added) juice, and milk as mentioned before. Water, water, water… at one point I was drinking 3 liters a day… then… well… now it’s more like .5 to 1 liter a day. Once your kidneys get used to – NO sodas – they will thank you.
• Baking. Bread is the enemy, but it also has nutrients. So we have sliced and deli type breads. I keep the portions small, freeze what we dont use and we are then able to A) save money on bread… and B) always have a bread available. We also like raisin bread, cake or brownies, bagels, croisants, donuts (yes – somehow donuts keep coming home, but not by my watch).
• Snacks. As much as I only want to type “see above”. I’d be lieing. We do however ration the portions, buy smaller (even though it’s not saving money), limit when one can have a snack – not before lunch, but after, not right before dinner, but after you’ve had a full meal.
• Serving style. They say you eat less if you don’t have all the food on the table to serve yourself 2nds. So I serve restaurant style. This way I know how much the kids have had, and I can make sure they get a little bit of all the varieties of food served for dinner.
• Amount cooks. No left overs for us. Seriously. I don’t want left overs. We don’t eat it half the time anyway. And, if I cook less, it means we have to choose other items to fill ourselves up. Think Fruit for dessert. Or a Veggie instead of 4 more bites of steak.

I know it seams hard core, but baking, steaming, grilling are how we eat now. It is hoping that we have a new life of healthy eating, healthy choices. That’s not to say we don’t eat out, or have binge days, those days will soon be a thing of the past. In the mean time…. I found this article to be amusing, and well, I don’t think choosing to eat healthy can be a mental disorder  (it’s probably the extremest who refuses to eat anything anymore because EVERYthing is not healthy in some way or form)….
http://www.naturalnews.com/029098_orthorexia_mental_disorder.html

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