Goal for the week: Stock your kitchen with healthy choices! You will only be as successful as your environment. If you want to live a healthy life, you have to make a healthy environment. To give you some inspiration, let me give you my top 10 “must have” items. You will always find these foods in my kitchen! 1. Canned beans. Sure I like to soak, rinse and cook my own. But nothing beats the convenience of canned beans. I especially like Eden Organic or Westbrae Natural brands since they have BPA free lining. 2. POMI tomatoes. They are diced tomatoes in cartons rather than cans with no added ingredients. They taste so fresh, especially in the winter when you can’t find a good fresh tomato. 3. Hemp Hearts, Manitoba brand. Hemp gets a bad rap. These hemp seeds are just like any other seed; flax, chia, sunflower, sesame, pumpkin…if you like seeds, you will like these. Hemp seeds are high in protein, essential fatty acids and many minerals. They make smoothies and sauces so creamy and have a great nutty flavor! 4. Tahini paste. I love, love, love tahini. Outside the obvious use (hummus), I mix it with lemon or lime, maybe a splash of water and add desired seasonings (curry powder and ginger most often). This makes a great sauce or dressing for vegetables and grains! 5. Medjool Dates…aka nature’s candy. Besides being the best pre-workout snack ever, I use them to sweeten baked goods. No sugar necessary! You can find many great recipes under Plant Based Nutrition on my Pinterest boards. 6. Flax seeds. Probably goes without saying, but I eat this at least once a day. In a smoothie, sprinkled on salad, added to grains, as an oatmeal topping or as a replacement for eggs in recipes. I’ll be honest, I prefer flax to chia. That’s just personal preference. 7. Frozen fruit. I love frozen fruit, maybe even more than fresh. It makes the perfect icy, sweet treat any time of day. My favorites are berries, cherries and pineapple. 8. High protein, whole intact grains: Quinoa, oats (oat bran in particular), buckwheat (including soba noodles) and millet. They are also all relatively quick cooking which is a plus. 9. Potatoes. Because I am on a mission to free the potato, I have to mention them! The potato has been unfairly villainized but I eat them, at the very least, every other day. So there. I especially love purple and red potatoes. Oh, and sweet potatoes and yams. Those too. 10. I’m sure it goes without saying, but fresh produce is a must. While I love variety, the most common each week include: red chard, collard greens, kale, spinach, parsley, asparagus, artichokes, zucchini, squash, broccoli, carrots, parsnips, grapefruit, berries, kiwi, lemon, limes and avocado. There you have it! Now tell me what is always stocked in YOUR kitchen!
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 12:58:12 +0000
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