Cooking with fresh ingredients
I love food, and I love to cook. I enjoy being creative and whip up own flavors or putting twists on traditional recipes. When I cook, I like cooking with fresh ingredients and barely use instant food/processed food. I think food made from scratch with fresh ingredients taste better and better for your body. I care what are going to be into our body and, if I needed to buy something pre-made, I will take time to read the food label.
Here is a couple of things I do when I cook for my family
1. Make a weekly menu plan
** Making weekly menu plans let you see what you will be cooking overtime and, you can make sure you are not cooking fatty/rich food every single days or you are serving enough vegetables not meat heavy meals everyday etc. I usually cook menu with various protein source and, I plan some days are beef, some days are chicken, some days are fish,some days are pork etc.
** Also, you can make your grocery list according to weekly menu plan, and you will buy what you will use in the week and this can save you money especially if you plan the weekly menu after looking through what you already have in your pantry,fridge, and freezer.
2. When I cook, I use extra virgin olive oil as everyday oil.
** Extra virgin olive oil is less processed and it is the oil from first pressing of olives. Cold press extra virgin olive oil is the oil first pressed from olives without heat. I have tried a couple of brands of extra virgin olive oil but, I like cold press Extra virgin olive oil called "Colavita"- product of Italy. The extra virgin olive oil is known to prevent your artery to clog up and good for heart health.
** When I do shallow fry or deep fry, I use either vegetable oil or peanut oil.
3. When I cook,I cook with fresh ingredients and make from scratch.
** This way, you know what you will be eating, and dishes will be without all those artificial ingredients, preservatives, coloring, stabilizer etc.. much better for your body
Recently, I came across the TV show called " Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution". Jamie Oliver is British chef, and he emphasis on healthy cooking with fresh ingredients.
In the show, he traveled to West Virginia and showed what elementary school kids eat as school breakfast and lunch. I do not have kids and, I did not grew up here in the states and I am not sure all schools in the states are like the school I saw on the show but it was scary to watch it and definitely I will be concerned if it was the school where our kids go to.
In case you missed the show, the particular school he was at served frozen pizza for breakfast, chicken nugget for lunch. Big ratio of the school meals kids had were highly processed food. I did not see ladies cooking with fresh food.
In Japan, elementary school kids get just lunch. Schools do not have ladies who prepare the food for schools. There are school lunch centers that prepare kids' meal for region, and they bring the meal to school by big truck/van and lunch ladies warm up the food for kids.
At elementary school, kids are divided into 6 classes or so per grade and each class uses main room as their room to study and teachers are the one to move class to class. In each class, they divide the students into groups and one group of kids go to lunch room to bring plates, forks, spoons, milks, meal itself etc and rotate among the class. Usually, once in a while, there is lunch box day and parents are the one to make the lunch for kids. And each month, school provide monthly menu with nutrient information to parents and, when I was a kid, I always knew what I will be getting at school and sometime I got excited for it. And, I saw many kinds of milk in the show from strawberry milk to chocolate milk along side the regular milk. In Japan, everyone gets regular milk and on occasion, lunch centers made plan with soy milk or drink made from yogurt. And, looking at what I remember getting when I was an elementary school kids, kids here in the states seem to getting much fattier,richer meals than kids in Japan.
Another scene I thought it different is that, kids lined up to hand out the plates to Jamie and Jamie was taking care of plates and leftovers.
In Japan, whoever finished eating go up front and put their own plate away and kids that brought the plates into class room from lunch room stuck up nicely and bring them back to lunch room lady and she put those plates stuck up in container and lunch meal center guys take care the rest.
Another scene I found it different is that school kids were allowed to use just spoon.
In Japan, all utensils come with plates and meal from tongs, wooden spoon to serve rice to everyone, spoons, forks, butter knife.. And, usually, kids that bring plates with utensil and meals serve food to other kids. Kids who brought milk to classroom from lunch room go around room and put one bottle of milk on kid's desk and kids who brought container of bread serve bread to kids that line up to be served.
Through the show, Oliver's mission is to educate people what people/school kids are eating and promote the healthy food/school lunch for kids.
One segment was about chicken nuggets. Oliver cut up the nice part out from a whole chicken: wing,breast, leg quarters.. and what left? Chicken carcass. He hacked it with knife a little and tossed into food processor and made a paste and, put all those commercial fillers and formed patties and cooked it up in front of kids.
Until I watch how he does on the show, I was not exactly sure how they make it since when you break into pieces, it does not look like whole chicken tenderloin and even if it were made from ground chicken, it did not look same.
After watching the show, when I went to grocery shopping, I grabbed one box of chicken nugget to have a look for ingredients and ingredients go..almost 4 lines. Some of them, I do not know what they are. If you make your own chicken tenders using chicken tenderloins, all you need is, chicken tender,flour, salt,pepper,egg, bread crumb and oil to cook with, and you can recognize all of those to be used in the process of making chicken tenders.
Many processed food are high in salt and some contains artificial flavoring to make food palatable and and some have preservatives to extend shelf life, plus low in nutrition benefit, high in calories. Eating food made with fresh food is better for your body. Processed food is quick to cook, but overtime, it would cost your health later on.
I see many differences in food between states and Japan. Food served here is richer and bigger portion and see huge selection of processed food, and I see many shopping carts in grocery store that load up huge pack of sugary sodas, sugary baked goods. I find green tea bottle in grocery store but it is nothing like real tea I am familiar with.
Recently, I saw in news that restaurants, fast food stores that have more than 20 location must indicate calories of each menu. Letting customers know the calories might be something but mostly, you can guess high calorie menu with common sense, and I do not think people eat the fast food/restaurant menu daily, it would not do much to people. Rather, I think what Jamie is trying to do is more meaningful and more effect on many people in term of overall health and healthy diet.
Jamie has his website and has online petition calling for better fresh food in country's school meal on his website. If you like to catch up with what he is doing or interested in joining in the petition, you can visit his website by clicking here.
So, get cooking and serve your family better food for their health!
Here is a couple of things I do when I cook for my family
1. Make a weekly menu plan
** Making weekly menu plans let you see what you will be cooking overtime and, you can make sure you are not cooking fatty/rich food every single days or you are serving enough vegetables not meat heavy meals everyday etc. I usually cook menu with various protein source and, I plan some days are beef, some days are chicken, some days are fish,some days are pork etc.
** Also, you can make your grocery list according to weekly menu plan, and you will buy what you will use in the week and this can save you money especially if you plan the weekly menu after looking through what you already have in your pantry,fridge, and freezer.
2. When I cook, I use extra virgin olive oil as everyday oil.
** Extra virgin olive oil is less processed and it is the oil from first pressing of olives. Cold press extra virgin olive oil is the oil first pressed from olives without heat. I have tried a couple of brands of extra virgin olive oil but, I like cold press Extra virgin olive oil called "Colavita"- product of Italy. The extra virgin olive oil is known to prevent your artery to clog up and good for heart health.
** When I do shallow fry or deep fry, I use either vegetable oil or peanut oil.
3. When I cook,I cook with fresh ingredients and make from scratch.
** This way, you know what you will be eating, and dishes will be without all those artificial ingredients, preservatives, coloring, stabilizer etc.. much better for your body
Recently, I came across the TV show called " Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution". Jamie Oliver is British chef, and he emphasis on healthy cooking with fresh ingredients.
In the show, he traveled to West Virginia and showed what elementary school kids eat as school breakfast and lunch. I do not have kids and, I did not grew up here in the states and I am not sure all schools in the states are like the school I saw on the show but it was scary to watch it and definitely I will be concerned if it was the school where our kids go to.
In case you missed the show, the particular school he was at served frozen pizza for breakfast, chicken nugget for lunch. Big ratio of the school meals kids had were highly processed food. I did not see ladies cooking with fresh food.
In Japan, elementary school kids get just lunch. Schools do not have ladies who prepare the food for schools. There are school lunch centers that prepare kids' meal for region, and they bring the meal to school by big truck/van and lunch ladies warm up the food for kids.
At elementary school, kids are divided into 6 classes or so per grade and each class uses main room as their room to study and teachers are the one to move class to class. In each class, they divide the students into groups and one group of kids go to lunch room to bring plates, forks, spoons, milks, meal itself etc and rotate among the class. Usually, once in a while, there is lunch box day and parents are the one to make the lunch for kids. And each month, school provide monthly menu with nutrient information to parents and, when I was a kid, I always knew what I will be getting at school and sometime I got excited for it. And, I saw many kinds of milk in the show from strawberry milk to chocolate milk along side the regular milk. In Japan, everyone gets regular milk and on occasion, lunch centers made plan with soy milk or drink made from yogurt. And, looking at what I remember getting when I was an elementary school kids, kids here in the states seem to getting much fattier,richer meals than kids in Japan.
Another scene I thought it different is that, kids lined up to hand out the plates to Jamie and Jamie was taking care of plates and leftovers.
In Japan, whoever finished eating go up front and put their own plate away and kids that brought the plates into class room from lunch room stuck up nicely and bring them back to lunch room lady and she put those plates stuck up in container and lunch meal center guys take care the rest.
Another scene I found it different is that school kids were allowed to use just spoon.
In Japan, all utensils come with plates and meal from tongs, wooden spoon to serve rice to everyone, spoons, forks, butter knife.. And, usually, kids that bring plates with utensil and meals serve food to other kids. Kids who brought milk to classroom from lunch room go around room and put one bottle of milk on kid's desk and kids who brought container of bread serve bread to kids that line up to be served.
Through the show, Oliver's mission is to educate people what people/school kids are eating and promote the healthy food/school lunch for kids.
One segment was about chicken nuggets. Oliver cut up the nice part out from a whole chicken: wing,breast, leg quarters.. and what left? Chicken carcass. He hacked it with knife a little and tossed into food processor and made a paste and, put all those commercial fillers and formed patties and cooked it up in front of kids.
Until I watch how he does on the show, I was not exactly sure how they make it since when you break into pieces, it does not look like whole chicken tenderloin and even if it were made from ground chicken, it did not look same.
After watching the show, when I went to grocery shopping, I grabbed one box of chicken nugget to have a look for ingredients and ingredients go..almost 4 lines. Some of them, I do not know what they are. If you make your own chicken tenders using chicken tenderloins, all you need is, chicken tender,flour, salt,pepper,egg, bread crumb and oil to cook with, and you can recognize all of those to be used in the process of making chicken tenders.
Many processed food are high in salt and some contains artificial flavoring to make food palatable and and some have preservatives to extend shelf life, plus low in nutrition benefit, high in calories. Eating food made with fresh food is better for your body. Processed food is quick to cook, but overtime, it would cost your health later on.
I see many differences in food between states and Japan. Food served here is richer and bigger portion and see huge selection of processed food, and I see many shopping carts in grocery store that load up huge pack of sugary sodas, sugary baked goods. I find green tea bottle in grocery store but it is nothing like real tea I am familiar with.
Recently, I saw in news that restaurants, fast food stores that have more than 20 location must indicate calories of each menu. Letting customers know the calories might be something but mostly, you can guess high calorie menu with common sense, and I do not think people eat the fast food/restaurant menu daily, it would not do much to people. Rather, I think what Jamie is trying to do is more meaningful and more effect on many people in term of overall health and healthy diet.
Jamie has his website and has online petition calling for better fresh food in country's school meal on his website. If you like to catch up with what he is doing or interested in joining in the petition, you can visit his website by clicking here.
So, get cooking and serve your family better food for their health!
Posted by yassy at 3/30/2010 11:50 AM 
Categories: Miscellaneous (cooking)
Tags: food revolution processed foods foods
Categories: Miscellaneous (cooking)
Tags: food revolution processed foods foods
I worked in the school system around here for 18 years. I worked with the Severely handicapped children, but I saw what the kids in the regular classes had all the time and I was just horrified at the kinds of foods they were served.
Things like double chocolate donuts for breakfast along with chocolate milk, and maybe a banana, or some kind of sugary cereal with Chocolate milk and syrupy canned peaches. THEN they wonder why the kids are bouncing off the walls and can't concentrate on their studies!!!
For lunch, we had about 9 different main meal things that were just switched around each month: Corn Dogs, Hot Dogs, Pizza, Hamburgers, Chicken Nuggets, Spaghetti, Chicken Patties, Burrito, Chili Nachos. The kids always had a choice of chocolate or 2% white milk, and they usually chose the chocolate. There was usually some kind of canned vegetables, and some kind of fruit. The fruit was about half the time, real (apples or bananas, and sometimes a pear-- most of which were thrown away without even a bite taken out of them) and the rest of the time it was syrupy canned fruit. NOT great for health, but, I guess it was at least food and some of the children didn't get much at home. SAD!!!
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Japanese school kids would not get donuts,pizza,chili,corn dogs etc for school lunch.Kids would not get to pick what they like to eat either.Everyone gets same menu.
I think that overall, food here are heavy in dairy and I feel dishes are heavy side on salt,butter not just you get to have so many choices of processed food at grocery stores or for school lunch.Even at restaurant, I do not get to see many vegetables on plate.Color of dishes on the plate are more colorful in Japan with more vegetable on the plates.
So,I would imagine it would be very hard for people who are allergic to dairy. Too many dishes familiar in the states are built on cheese,heavy cream,milk etc.. Many Japanese dishes are built on soy sauce and many of them are without dairy.
I also remember I was surprised to see waffles,pop tarts,cereal etc on breakfast plate when I first visited USA.These were, to me, sweets not meals. Also having a bowl of soup with roll was odd to me because, to me, a bowl of soup was more like side dish, not main dish.
My husband on the other hand thought our Japanese breakfast was odd, because we have miso soup, salad, boiled egg, bowl of rice and other side dishes.He felt that our breakfast was almost like dinner.
That being said, in the states, you can get all kinds of food ingredients including herbs and spices and I enjoy trying out new ingredients and flavor.
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