Healthy Eating Without the Ick
Scenario One: You sit down to dinner at a friend’s house. Your friend, beaming proudly, tells you that she slaved for hours over the roast beef. When she sets the dish before you, you see it gleams – with grease. I’m about to eat the first roast beef constructed entirely from motor oil, you think. Ick.
Scenario Two: You sit down to dinner at a friend’s house. Your friend, beaming proudly, tells you she has recently become vegetarian and vows to wow with her home-cooked meatless feast. She sets a bowl of risotto before you and you can’t help notice it’s green. “That’s right,” she says, “I made it with pureed peas! It’s low-fat!” I gave up pureed peas when I was a baby, you think, but you try it anyway: Ick.
Any of this sound familiar? Unfortunately, most of us can answer yes. And if we’re being honest, many of us must admit to sometimes being the proud cook. But with all the talk about arteries, cholesterol, good fats, bad fats, and this month’s latest diet fad, what can a cook do? More importantly, does it require pureed peas?
The easy answer is this: there’s plenty you can cook that tastes great and you only need to add peas if you like them. Try a few of these ideas:
Slow Cookers Make Happy Cooks. Slow cookers, such as Crockpot ®, are both the busy cook’s secret weapon and a friend to healthy eaters. Try putting a whole chicken, some vegetables, and a handful of herbs in your cooker, put the lid on, and set it on low. In six to eight hours, you have a delicious chicken dinner. That’s it. No fat added, no nasty preservatives and chemical flavor enhancers, and it’s almost foolproof.
Soup, Un-Canned. When I started cooking, I could not make good soup. It always tasted like vegetables in water – not surprising, because it was vegetables in water. If you have a slow cooker and you just happen to have cooked a chicken dinner, pick the meat from the bones, save the meat, and throw the carcass back in the cooker. Add a couple cups of water, some onions and garlic, a bay leaf or a shake of your favorite seasoning, and cook the lot on high for four hours or longer. You now have amazing broth, the base for any soup you care to create. Good broth puts homemade soups in a class of their own. What makes soups so great is flexibility: some of the best soups I have ever made have evolved from a quick check of the crisper and some frantic math. Add some chopped veggies, a can of white beans, half a cup of tomato sauce and some leftover elbow pasta – voila, dinner and lunch!
Grab That Frying Pan! Yes, that’s frying pan. And fry – just don’t bathe your food in oil. A thin coating on the bottom is usually sufficient. Then be prepared to stick around and stir. This is commonly and erroneously called sauteing, but it’s actually a quick fry over high heat. (Sauteing is actually tossing the food around in the pan. Don’t try it unless you can actually juggle.) The trick is to watch the heat – not too hot, or smoke happens, but not too cold, or very little happens.
When those veggies are finished, try dressing them with a healthy pinch of kosher salt and some balsamic vinegar. Trust me, no one will miss the glistening fat.
Scenario Two: You sit down to dinner at a friend’s house. Your friend, beaming proudly, tells you she has recently become vegetarian and vows to wow with her home-cooked meatless feast. She sets a bowl of risotto before you and you can’t help notice it’s green. “That’s right,” she says, “I made it with pureed peas! It’s low-fat!” I gave up pureed peas when I was a baby, you think, but you try it anyway: Ick.
Any of this sound familiar? Unfortunately, most of us can answer yes. And if we’re being honest, many of us must admit to sometimes being the proud cook. But with all the talk about arteries, cholesterol, good fats, bad fats, and this month’s latest diet fad, what can a cook do? More importantly, does it require pureed peas?
The easy answer is this: there’s plenty you can cook that tastes great and you only need to add peas if you like them. Try a few of these ideas:
Slow Cookers Make Happy Cooks. Slow cookers, such as Crockpot ®, are both the busy cook’s secret weapon and a friend to healthy eaters. Try putting a whole chicken, some vegetables, and a handful of herbs in your cooker, put the lid on, and set it on low. In six to eight hours, you have a delicious chicken dinner. That’s it. No fat added, no nasty preservatives and chemical flavor enhancers, and it’s almost foolproof.
Soup, Un-Canned. When I started cooking, I could not make good soup. It always tasted like vegetables in water – not surprising, because it was vegetables in water. If you have a slow cooker and you just happen to have cooked a chicken dinner, pick the meat from the bones, save the meat, and throw the carcass back in the cooker. Add a couple cups of water, some onions and garlic, a bay leaf or a shake of your favorite seasoning, and cook the lot on high for four hours or longer. You now have amazing broth, the base for any soup you care to create. Good broth puts homemade soups in a class of their own. What makes soups so great is flexibility: some of the best soups I have ever made have evolved from a quick check of the crisper and some frantic math. Add some chopped veggies, a can of white beans, half a cup of tomato sauce and some leftover elbow pasta – voila, dinner and lunch!
Grab That Frying Pan! Yes, that’s frying pan. And fry – just don’t bathe your food in oil. A thin coating on the bottom is usually sufficient. Then be prepared to stick around and stir. This is commonly and erroneously called sauteing, but it’s actually a quick fry over high heat. (Sauteing is actually tossing the food around in the pan. Don’t try it unless you can actually juggle.) The trick is to watch the heat – not too hot, or smoke happens, but not too cold, or very little happens.
When those veggies are finished, try dressing them with a healthy pinch of kosher salt and some balsamic vinegar. Trust me, no one will miss the glistening fat.
