June in Butchart gardens

Stuffed zucchini

Ingredients

zucchini

minced chicken

onions

mayonnaise

salt

pepper

Direction

Cut zucchini into halves lengthwise, scoop out pulp and grease with mayonnaise.

Finely chopped onion, mix with ground meat. Add salt and pepper

Fill zucchini with meat mixture and place in baking pan.

Pour mayonnaise and sprinkle with grated cheese

Bake in preheted oven (400F) for 20 minutes.

Stuffed zucchini

father's day

father's day

Chicken Broccoli Cheddar Pocket

 

 

 

Freshly baked sandwich pocket fresh from your own oven…

Ingredients

• 1/2 batch, or approx. 4 cups bread dough


• 2 large chicken breasts


• 2 cups steamed broccoli


• 1 – 2 oz cream cheese


• 1/4 – 1/2 cup alfredo sauce


• 1 – 2 cups cheddar cheese


• various seasonings


• 1/2 cup olive oil

Instructions

1. Season and bake chicken breasts in a 350 degree oven until no longer pink in center. Dice chicken and set aside.

 2. Roll out a handful of bread dough into a 1/4 inch thick rectangle. Spread 1-2 tsp of softened cream cheese over dough. Add 1-2 Tbsp of alfredo sauce over the cream cheese. Top with 1/2 cup diced chicken, 1/4 cup steamed chopped broccoli, and 1/4 – 1/3 cup cheddar cheese.

 3. Fold up ends of dough over the filling mixture. Fold other ends up and over and seal seams shut using a bit of water if necessary.

 4. Place seam side down on a prepped baking sheet, cut a small steam vent in the top, and let rise for about 30 minutes in a warm, draft-free place.

 5. Bake at 400 degrees until golden brown, about 20-25 minutes. Brush with oil mixture again after baking if desired.

Details

Prep time: 30 mins

Cook time: 25 mins

Total time: 55 mins

Yield: 4 large pockets

Chicken Broccoli Cheddar Pocket

What is Paleo?

Paleolithic age is a prehistoric period of human history and Paleo is the short form word derived from the term Paleolithic. The premise of living a Paleo lifestyle would then be centered around how our bodies have not 100% adapted to eating foods in this day and age that were not available to us tens of thousands of years ago.

That’s really an understatement, as food these days become more and more processed. What we put in our bodies is nowhere near what our bodies are actually capable of processing.

There’s a reason why food is processed in such a way, and it can be a whole article on its own, but suffice it to say that mass food production has advanced in such a way because there are just too many people consuming food and not enough of it being produced. So as time goes by, the food we’re putting in our mouths resemble real food less and less.

A Paleo diet seeks to reverse this, and eat things like meat, vegetable, nuts, seeds and fruits. This means absolutely zero alcohol, grains, legumes and dairy whatsoever. It also means steering clear of processed foods by any means necessary. In general, eating only what our thousands of years old ancestors would hunt and forage for and finally eat.

If you’re wondering how big a deal this is, simply look at the western patterns of food consumption. Most of their foods are refined with sugars, adulterated with vegetable oils, dairy products and grains. As a result, there’s an epidemic level of heart attacks, type-2 diabetes and obesity rampant there. In just America, diet-related diseases are the largest cause of death. Before, these diseases were rare or practically non-existent so you can tell right off the bat that it’s because of the change in our dietary intake.

My goal isn’t to scare you into swapping your eating habits 180 degrees into eating only Paleo type foods. If anything, all I want is to impress upon you the importance of eating well, and to avoid foods which would negatively affect your health and lifestyle. End of the day, if you remember this blog and this post, you’ll at least find out what is truly in the food that you eat on a daily basis.

If anything, just take a step back whenever you’re going grocery shopping. Check what you buy. Find out what the ingredients are and how natural it is for your body to process. Yes, it may be a lot of effort at first, but isn’t life worth it? After all, you’re only going to do it once and when you find out what’s in that favorite instant 2 minute TV dinner you used to purchase, you can start making a change.

Change doesn’t have to be drastic. It needs to be gradual if it’s going to be permanent. And the first step you need is to know more. Be involved in finding out what you eat, how you’re going to prepare food on a daily basis or where you’re going to be buying the ingredients for your next meal.

Most importantly, it starts with the first step.

I hope you’re with me in this all the way.  If you’re looking to get jump started, you can also visit the site I used to get most of my information. I purchased a recipe book called Secret Paleo and I’m having a great time trying out dishes that I never knew existed.

For more information please click here.

What is Paleo?

raw snacks

raw snacks

Oat Bran Cookies.

 

Ingredients:

2 eggs,

4 tbsp of  oat bran,

4 tablespoons of yogurt (I took Greek),

2 tblsp of Kefir

Direction

Stir eggs, oat bran, yogurt,  kefir and let stand for a while in heat. Then add a little baking powder.

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Sprinkle form with oil. In each cell put a tablespoon of the mixture  and bake about 20 minutes.

Oat Bran Cookies.

lunch

lunch

organic

organic

pregnancy

pregnancy

5 Suggestions For A Healthy Snack

Snacks are an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Healthy snacks can help provide extra nutrients and also count towards our five a day target of fruit and vegetables. Healthy natural snacks should be eaten between meals and will help towards your health and nutrition.

Nutritionists recommend that healthy snacks should contain vegetables, fruit, nuts or cereal grains. They will also cost you less than buying junk food that has little nutritional value and is bad for your health. Combining healthy snacks with a good diet and exercise leads to an improved well being. The five ideas below, for healthy snacks, are suitable for everyone from school children to those at work.

Avocado and cheese sandwich made with wholemeal bread. Avocados are a good source of vitamin E and C as well as being high in fibre and potassium. They also contain folic acid, an important vitamin for pregnant women. Cheese contains important levels of calcium and wholemeal bread is high in fibre.

Dried banana chips. Dried banana chips are often fried in coconut oil and coated in honey. Bananas contain high levels of vitamin A and C. They are also rich in potassium. You can often find banana chips included in muesli. Great for a carbohydrate boost.

Crackers and cheese. A very popular snack after dinner. Cheese is high in calcium. Crackers also come in wholemeal varieties and these are a good source of extra fibre.

Fruit salad. You can combine any of your favourite fruits in this snack such as kiwi fruit, apples, pear, and nectarines. This snack will help you towards your five a day of fruit and vegetables.

Hummus in pita bread. Hummus is made from dried chickpeas, garlic and sometimes tahini. Hummus contains fibre and iron; tahini is made from sesame seeds and is high in calcium

5 Suggestions For A Healthy Snack

10 Diet Rules You Can Break

There are actually diet rules out there that are meant to be broken?

Yes, recently many dated diet guidelines and myths are up for speculation. You’ve probably heard all these silly rules before, but experts weigh-in on the worthiness of these supposed truisms – most of which won’t help you lose weight or make dieting any easier.

10 Food Rules You Can Ignore:

1. Eating at night will pile on the pounds. The total calories you consume over a 24-hour period or over a week is what causes you to gain weight, and when you eat these calories doesn’t matter.

2. It’s best to eat at the same times every day. Eat when you’re hungry, not when the clock says it’s time to eat.

3. Dieting with a buddy always makes weight loss easier. Common goals may pay off but weight loss is a personal journey.

4. Dietary fat keeps you feeling full longer, so you’ll eat less. Fat does take longer to digest, but it will not help you control your appetite. Foods likely to fight off hunger the longest are protein foods, followed by carbohydrates, then fats.

5. When you blow your diet, you might as well wait until the next day to get back on track. Nothing could be farther from the truth- always try to get right back on track with your next meal.

6. Refusing food at a party or when visiting is rude. Turning down food that you know will blow your diet is socially acceptable.

7. Skipping a meal every now and then will help you lose. Skipping a meal means you will be so hungry at the next meal that you are likely to overeat. This can also help lead to a slowdown of your metabolism.

8. Bread is fattening, nuts are fattening, pasta is fattening. Whole-wheat bread/pasta is a great source of nutrients, and it won’t make you gain weight more than any other food with the same number of calories.

9. All calories are equal. This is somewhat true, however; you’ll get more nutrients from a 100-calorie apple than from a 100-calorie portion of white bread. Choose healthier items if you are losing weight, or controlling your hunger.

10. If you don’t clean your plate, you’re wasting food. If you just don’t feel right leaving the table until you’ve cleaned your plate, underestimate your hunger and put less food on your plate to begin with, or you may overeat.

Don’t believe everything you hear! Much of it is just superstition. Now you can tell your friends the real truth. In the end, nutrition experts say, many of the food and dieting rules we hold dear are meant to be broken – without guilt!

10 Diet Rules You Can Break

Berry Time!

Long before winter comes, black bears in the forest spend all their time eating everything  

they can sink their teeth into. During the summer, bears eat and eat and eat, trying to get as fat as they possibly can, and when the weather turns cold, they look for a place to curl up and then they sleep the winter away.

Now, the habits of bears might not seem like something you should try to follow. After all, doctors are always warning us humans that we shouldn’t overeat, and that we shouldn’t spend all of our time lying around, doing nothing.

But there is one part of the black bear’s habits that you should actually try to imitate, because it would be good for your health.

Black bears eat a lot of berries, of many different varieties, such as raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries.

Berries contain natural sugars and wonderful flavors. Unlike many other foods that are really good for you, but which don’t taste good, berries taste great.

And unlike many foods that taste great but which aren’t good for you, berries are among the most health friendly foods you can eat.

It’s only been within the last decade that scientists have started to pay a lot of attention to the health benefits of berries. And what researchers are learning about the health benefits of berries has a lot of exciting potential for human diets.

One of the first major experiments on the health benefits of berries took place at Tufts University about ten years ago.

Researchers were working with a group of aging rats. They fed them diets of various foods to see what the effects would be. Among the foods they tested were strawberries, blueberries, and spinach.

Now these rats were fairly old in terms of “rat years”. In fact, their age was equivalent to humans about 70 years old.

The foods the scientists tested were all very high in beneficial antioxidants, so the scientists wanted to see if any of these foods would boost the physical and mental capabilities of these aging rats.

The researchers found that while several of these foods seemed to offer some antioxidant protection, the rats that had been fed blueberries were the only ones that actually improved in their abilities.

In fact, the rats which had been fed blueberries were able to perform like much younger rats!

This was a very exciting find, and the scientists then wanted to find what it was in the blueberries that produced this very beneficial effect.

It turns out that the chemicals responsible for making these aging rats act mentally younger and perkier were the pigments in the skin of the blueberries.

The compounds that give ripe berries their beautiful colors are the very substances that have such strong anti-oxidant powers. And antioxidants are compounds that help repair some of the damage that happens to our body cells every day.

Scientists have discovered that the darker the berry, the more health benefits it has! Eating two thirds of a cup of blueberries will give you as much anti-oxidant protection as five servings of apples or squash.

The dark pigments in these berries seem to offer protection against cardiovascular disease, degenerative eye disease such as cataracts, and may offer some help in preventing some cancers, and bladder infections.

If the exciting results of the rat studies turn out to also hold true for humans, it may mean that compounds in these dark berries may help protect brain cells from the degenerative diseases of aging.

You can get this fantastic antioxidant protection whether you eat your berries fresh, frozen, or dried.

You can eat berries raw, add them to your favorite cereals, or make a smoothie drink with various berries, fruits, milk and yoghurt. Get creative and find ways to mix berries into your favorite recipes.

In North America, blueberries are available fresh or frozen year round. If you can’t get fresh berries, dried berries are also filled with very concentrated levels of the valuable antioxidants.

If you live in a place where blueberries are not easily available, look for other fruits and berries that have very dark red or dark purple colors.

Foods such as pomegranates, bilberries, cherries, black raspberries, saskatoons or serviceberries also have high levels of these very beneficial dark pigments. These foods offer benefits similar to the benefits of blueberries.

So, think about incorporating at least one habit of bears into your lifestyle – and make berries a frequent part of your diet!

Berry Time!

Healthy Eating Tips For Busy Moms

Moms are constantly on the go.  Whether you are a working mom or a stay-at-home mother, it is hard to find the time to sit and eat a meal, let alone a healthy one.  Here are a few tips to sneak that healthy eating into the busiest of schedules.

Exercise is important but eating is the best way to get the nutrition that you need to keep the body healthy.  If your eating habits are poor, then the benefits of exercise are decreased.  In essence, you are working against yourself.

The world of work has necessitated the need for instant everything, including food.  If you don’t have time for breakfast, you grab a pre-packaged granola bar.  For lunch, you eat a frozen microwaveable meal and grab a soda from the vending machine.  Dinner comes from a fast food restaurant or other takeout place.

For a busy mom, this type of processed eating is not going to yield the energy she needs to make it through the day successfully.  These foods may be okay in a pinch, but they definitely should not be the rule of thumb.  Healthy eating habits for mom also translate into healthy eating habits for the rest of the family as well.

Let’s start with what mom needs to eat.  No more than twelve ounces of protein are needed per day.  People don’t realize that getting that much protein is not hard.  Usually we are getting too much protein which gets stored in the body as fat.  One or two servings of fruit and five to seven servings of vegetables are recommended each day.  Fats should be kept to a minimum with most being unsaturated oils.  Carbohydrates should come in the form of whole grains, beans, and legumes.  Very little processed sugar should be consumed.

The best way to achieve this is pre-planning.  The evening before, plan what you will eat the next day.  Package your snacks into portion sizes and put together your meals.

Weekends are a good time to cook several meals for the week ahead.  This way, the meals can be separated into containers and frozen to be warmed up later.  Because you have prepared the food, you know what types of ingredients are in it.

If you plan to be out during lunch, fix a salad or other meal that does not need refrigeration.  If it does, carry an insulated lunch bag with an ice pack.  This way, you are never without something healthy to eat.

A busy mother can still be a healthy mother.  Use weekends to prepare future meals.  Get the family involved to lessen the work and increase the variety of the meals.

Healthy Eating Tips For Busy Moms

10 Ways To Sneak Some Extra Fruits And Vegetables In Your Family’s Diet

We all know by now that we should be eating at least five servings

of fruits and vegetables each day. But knowing and doing are two different things, aren’t they? Sometimes it is just not easy to get them all in there. We are constantly tempted to fill up on convenience and junk food. If your family is anything like mine, they’d much rather fill up on a bag of chips or a bowl of rice or pasta instead of trying an apple or a plate of steamed broccoli. So we’ll have to get creative. Here are a few ideas to “sneak” some extra vegetables and fruits in your family’s diet.

1. Start the day with a breakfast smoothie. All you have to do is throw some fruits, low-fat yogurt and ice in a blender. You may also want to add a scoop of protein powder in there for good measure. Just blend for a few seconds and you have the perfect breakfast ready to go. I like to sip mine in a thermal cup on the way to work. To make it even more appealing for your kids, use some frozen yogurt or a scoop of ice cream in the smoothie. They won’t believe that you are letting them have ice cream for breakfast.

2. Dried fruit makes an excellent snack any time of the day. Add some small cartons of raisins to your child’s lunch box, pack some yogurt-covered raisins in your husband’s briefcase and keep some trail mix sitting around for snacking. You can also add dried fruit to oatmeal and cereal in the morning. My family loves banana chips in their breakfast cereal.

3. Add some fruits and vegetables to your family’s sandwiches. You can add some banana, sliced apples or strawberry slices to a peanut butter sandwich. Top a turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato, cucumber and anything else they will eat. You can even make a sub shop style vegetable sandwich by combining several different vegetables with some mayonnaise and cheese on bread.

4. Have a salad bar at dinner. Set out a variety of chopped vegetables, some cheese and croutons as well as several choices of salad dressing along with the lettuce and let everybody create their own perfect salad.

5. Let them drink their fruits and vegetables. Keep an assortment of fruit and vegetable juices in the fridge and encourage everyone to drink them as a snack. Get creative. You could start “family cocktail hour” by pouring everybody a glass of his or her favorite juice over ice. Add some straws, cocktail umbrellas and sit together to talk about how everybody’s day went.

6. Try this for dessert. Put a small scoop of ice cream or frozen yogurt in a bowl and top it with lots of fresh or frozen fruit.

7. Offer fruits and vegetables as snacks. You can cut apples into slices and top them with peanut butter or cheese. Cube cheese and serve with grapes. Cut up some fresh veggies and serve them with ranch dip. And of course there’s ants on a log. Spread some cream cheese or peanut butter on the inside of a stick of celery and sprinkle raisins on it (wow, fruit and vegetable in one snack).

8. Try some new fruits and vegetables. Pick something exotic to get your family’s curiosity. With a little luck their curiosity will outweigh their initial apprehension to trying something new. You could try artichokes, plantains, papaya, mango, star fruit, or anything else you can find in the produce department of your local store.

9. Make a pot of vegetable soup or a stew that’s heavy on veggies and easy on the meat. Both of these make some great comfort food when the weather gets cold.

10. Start “My Veggie Day”. Each family member gets to pick a vegetable one day of the week. They qualify to pick a vegetable as long as they tried each vegetable the week before, otherwise they loose a turn and Mom gets to pick.

Incorporate a few of these ideas and you will have everyone in your family eating more fruits and vegetables in no time.

Here is another tip:

Now that everyone in the family has gotten a taste for it, make sure you always have plenty of fresh fruits and veggies available and ready to snack on.

10 Ways To Sneak Some Extra Fruits And Vegetables In Your Family’s Diet

Make Eating Healthy Foods Fun.

Children everywhere in the world have an on-going love affair with junk food

such as hamburgers, pizza, candy, soda and salty foods like potato chips and french fries. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find a single child who has these same strong feeling for the healthy food that they need such as grains, vegetables, fruits and foods reach in nutrients such as meat, beans, fish and nuts.

Fortunately, there is one tied and tested strategy to make kids eat the kind of healthy food that some of them may not want — that’s by making it fun.

That’s right, make eating healthy food fun. And how do you do that? Here are some tips:

1. The Sneak Attack.

Try sneaking in some of those fruits and vegetables along with the kind of food they like, say, making muffins out of bananas or apples. There are lots of vegetables the you can throw in when you’re serving the kids pizza. You could also make them look funny by arranging them creatively on a plate or making them stand up like people. Sure, some people don’t want their kids playing with food, but if it will help them get healthier, it may be worth the effort.

2. Funny Name Game.

If your kids are below the age of four, here’s a nifty trick that gets them every time. Give the fruits and vegetables funny names and concoct elaborate stories. Some stories will end with these funny-named vegetables getting swallowed alive by the giant child. In another version, the vegetables run for cover and hide from their enemies by entering a big cave that happens to be your child’s mouth where they quickly get gulped down.

3. The Taste Test.

Kids dislike vegetables because they don’t like the taste. Therefore, make the healthy foods taste better and your child will love them. For instance, put peanut butter on celery or add a dash of flavor to broccoli with ranch dressing. I’m sure you can think of dozens of ways to spruce up healthy food.

The key is to find creative ways to make your children enjoy eating healthy food. And once they’ve acquired a taste for it, eating healthy foods will be second nature to them.

Make Eating Healthy Foods Fun.

Shopping for bread.

Diabetics and people who are trying to lose weight or control cholesterol  should avoid all forms of ground-up grains,

and that includes bread. For everyone else, bread is a perfectly satisfactory food.

Breads have been made for thousands of years, in virtually every culture, to wrap, sandwich, or accompany other foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner.When ground-up grains were used shortly after milling, there was no need to remove anything or to add ingredients to keep them fresh. Only in our recent history have we turned into junk food by removing the germ and fiber from the grains. Even worse, some bread manufactures add partially hydrogenated fats to their breads  to prolong their shelf life.

The best way to assure that you are getting a bread that is made from whole grains, with nothing removed, is to bake your own bread made from flour you grind yourself, or buy from local bakers who grind their flour fresh every few days (these are hard to find). Not many people are going to be able to do that. So here are my goals for picking the best of the commercial breads:

1. Avoid any bread that made with partially hydrogenated oils.

Read the list of ingredients and if it contains the worlds partially hydrogenated, put it back on the shelf. Partially hydrogenated oils are totally unnecessary for making good-tasting bread.

2.Get as much whole grain flour as possible.

This isn’t easy to tell, because regulations allow bread makers to use the worlds whole wheat even is portions of grain have been removed. Words like stone ground, multi-grain, seven-grain or cracked wheat sound healthy but don’t tell you anything. Generally, breads that list whole wheat as the first ingredient are better that those that start with enriched flour of some sort.

3.Pick breads with higher fiber content.

2 grams of fiber per slice is better that 1 or 0 grams. One caution: breads promoted for their fiber content may have added pea or some such ingredient; that’s adding sawdust, not an indication that you’re getting the whole grains. Check the list of ingredients on these breads.

4. Added seeds are a bonus.

Many breads include seeds in the dough or as toppings. This is an easy way to add caraway seeds, sesame seeds, poppy seeds or other whole seeds to your diet.

5. Breads made from 100 % sprouted grains have all the nutrients of whole grains, may have more vitamins, and may raise bloon sugar less that breads made with dry flour.

6. Watch out for breads that taste too good.

Nothing is more seductive than a loaf of freshly baked bread. A reasonable portion is 1-2 slices. If you eat the whole loaf in one sitting, or the whole basket of rolls in a restaurant before dinner comes, you’ll get into trouble.

Shopping for bread.

Easy Sweet And Sour Peppers.

Ingredients

For the sauce:

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1/2 cup water

1 clove garlic, crushed in garlic press

1/4 cup catsup

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup cider vinegar

2 tablespoons brown sugar

For the vegetables:

1/2 cup bouillon

1 bag frozen or canned (drained) shoe peg corn

1 8-ounce can sliced water chestnuts, drained

2 cups cooked barley or other whole grains of your choice

Direction

Make the sauce: Mix the cornstarch and 2 tablespoons of the water into a smooth paste. Combine with the remaining water and the other sauce ingredients.

Heat the bouillon to boiling in a pot and add frozen vegetables; stir until thawed and heated through. Add the remaining vegetables and sauce; heat through. Serve over the whole grains of your choice.

4 servings

Easy Sweet And Sour Peppers.

Healthy Breakfast Foods.

It is always surrounded by silly excuse of lack of time. And still no one denies that fact that “breakfast”

is the most important meal of the day.

Why such a hullabaloo about this early morning meal? Well, for starters, this meal comes after a break of 8 – 10 hours; hence your blood sugar level will be low. Since your body has gone with out food for such a long time, it needs nourishment to kick-start its day. Therefore “breakfast” is considered to be an important and essential meal of the day.

Breakfast benefits both, young and old. It is the key to jump start your muscles and your day. People who eat breakfast (healthy) daily are more likely to

- Consume more vitamins, minerals and less of fat and cholesterol.

- Increased strength and endurance.

- Better concentration and productivity all day long.

- Control over weight

- Low cholesterol = no risk or little risk of heart disease

Children who eat breakfast are likely to have better concentration, problem-solving skills and eye-hand coordination. They will be alert, creative, and less likely to miss days of school.

If you think skipping this meal, will help you lose weight, think again. By passing over this meal, your body will go in the starvation mode and make you crave for snacks especially sweets. Impulsive snacking on unhealthy foods can lead to weight gain. So you motive of losing weight by skipping breakfast stays unachieved.

Try to choose healthy foods from at least two food groups each morning

- Fruits & Vegetables

- Grains

- Dairy

- Proteins

A glass of pure fruit juice, bananas, yoghurt, low-calorie muesli with semi skimmed or skimmed milk, fresh fruit salad with few spoonfuls of low fat yoghurt, fresh and raw veggies mixed with flavoured yoghurt, a slice of toast or plain bread with eggs, boiled or poached are some of the options for breakfast. Kids can enjoy a Smoothie with their favourite fruits; add dash of yoghurt or honey to make it more delicious.

If you look forward to eating different kinds of healthy foods for breakfast, you are less like to skip this meal. If time is your hurdle, think about packing your breakfast or eating on the ‘run’, its better than skipping it altogether.

Healthy Breakfast Foods.

Caesar Tofu Dressing.

Ingredients

2 garlic gloves, peeled and minced

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

12-ounce package of tofu

2 tablespoons Asian fish sauce or soy sauce

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Direction

Combine all ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth.

Keeps well.

Yield: about 1 cup

Note: Toss into a bowl of romaine lettuce or your favorite salad greens. Add a little shredded Romano or Parmesan cheese and some anchovies (if you like) for a delicious Caesar salad.

Caesar Tofu Dressing.