Cooking with fresh ingredients Part IV
In previous entry titled "Cooking with fresh ingredients Part II ", I wrote that since Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution campaign;bring
fresh food to school lunch menu, I have started noticing many more
celebrity chefs are working on their own project to encourage people to
eat fresh food not processed food.
Also, in another previous entry titled "Cooking with fresh ingredients part III", I wrote that under the such great fresh food movement, restaurants are now trying to focus on more fresh food, but I think that most cases, their plates still lack variety of vegetable.
In fact, according to news paper article written by Jennifer Motl, American people are supposed to eat 2 C of fruits and 2 1/2C of vegetable per day, but 75% of them eat fewer than 1.5C of fruits per day, 1/3 C of dark green/orange vegetable and legumes.
She points out that why we fall so short when it comes to vegetable/fruits department are taste,convenience,cost,availability,family habit, and lack of knowledge.
To read full article by Jennifer Motl at fredericksburg.com website,please click here.
I watched the recent season of TV show titled "Food revolution", and it seems that this time, Jamie seemed to have great difficulty to get school and LAUSD on board to bring the healthier lunch menu for kids at school, but there were some positive notes.
School has started growing vegetable/herbs in the school garden, and at the very end, school has also decided to pull the flavored milk from cafeteria.
Also, Jamie has helped one single father family that mostly ate fast food at home motivated to start growing their own vegetables/herbs in the garden and to start cooking with fresh food right out from the garden.
One thing that was new this time was to get fast food store "Patra's" owner on board to start serving healthier hand hold food with better quality ingredient such as 100% grass-fed Angus beef for the burgers, real fresh fruits for smoothies etc for the community.
I thought that although he could not make as much progress as he did in his first season in West Virginia,but overall, it made some small changes and inspired more people for healthy eating with community level so,I thought it was great season.
The Jamie's show is largely focused on school lunch menu, but when you think about it, kids eat food more at home, and food at school is just 1/3 of their daily intake.
Therefore, even though it is good,positive and important movement to make a change with school lunch, parents should step up and start cooking with fresh food at home level,too.
Start your own vegetable gardens,and get kids involved when you cook food..
Starting your own vegetable/herb garden is good one.
Back home in Japan, my parents still grow some vegetables in their garden such as cucumbers,eggplant, potatoes,green peppers,cabbage,sweet potatoes and so forth and, when I was a kid, I was with them helping watering,harvesting, and enjoyed how they grow before my eyes.
Once I helped them harvesting some of the vegetables from the yard, my mother also asked me to help cooking for everyone. I stood next to my mother,and helped her cooking and asked questions why she does this or that, and it was great experience to learn a little bit of tips and tricks.
It was also great moment spent with my mother and, we cooked food together with lots of laughter and a little bit of feeling of accomplishment, and I was a little proud of myself when she said that some of the dishes were made with my help, and my father would go "Hmm,this tastes good!" with big smile.
I also think that kids would most likely try eat vegetables that they helped cooking. It is just that it makes the food taste different if you get involved in the process of cooking, and they would feel it tastes better.
Growing vegetables in your garden is one way for kids to get motivated to try new vegetables. Not only budget friendly, but also nutritionally better since vegetables that do not get picked early for traveling long distance to get to local grocery stores have more time to grow on the vine and contains more vitamin C and B.
Vitamin C and B are very delicate vitamins that degrade over time and some of the vitamins are heat/light sensitive. Therefore, if the vegetable has to travel thousands of miles to get to your local grocery stores, then, vitamins retained in the vegetables get degraded and less vitamins are there by the time it gets served on the plate at home.
Dinner table habits..
Before I write about dinner table rules at home, I will write about school lunch rule.
It has been years since the time I was in the school,and it might have some changes but when I was a kid, back home 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 sheet with nutrient information printed to parents. Usually, menu was based around either rolls or white rice and it comes with a few side dish, and fresh fruits as desert.
In Japan, whoever finished eating goes 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.
I saw many kinds of flavored 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 smoothie.
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 with less vegetables (colorful) plate than kids in Japan.
Not only that, they have choices of menu to pick while I did not have any choice in menu at school and at elementary school years, we kids had to eat everything or at least try the food on the plate. If you did not finish the plate by the time lunch time finishes, you had to sit at the table and eat it while other kids are cleaning the room..
I had a few times I had to sit at the table because I did not like the food on the plate or simply slow to eat compared to other kids in the class room,while they were cleaning the room since already break time is over and cleaning time is on...
It really was not fun at all eating alone,not being able to play with friends but,I think in a way, it helped curbing the attitude toward food "I eat this, not that" and at least, I take a bite with everything on the plate.
At home, dinner usually consists of bowl of rice along with a few side dishes and a bowl of salad and small fruits at the end. When I was a kid, I had a cute small bowl for rice and my mother plated all the side dish in one plate.
Each of the side dish was small amount,but if I saw fish, I whined and said that I would not eat it because I do not like the taste.
My mother was tough and quite consistent at the dinner table,and I had to eat at least a bite of everything even if I did not like them. She kept serving up the side dishes on one plate so that she knows I ate it some,and at the same time, she tried all kinds of sauce and flavoring with things I did not cared for much.
I admit I hated fish,but with her effort of trying different kinds of fish and different kinds of sauce and flavoring, I had one that I really liked even if it were fish. I liked mackerel,sardines etc and it is strange but as I age, my taste buds got changed and now I love fish. I even crave for fish sometimes and order at the restaurant.
With that story in mind, I would like to tell all the mothers in the states that when kids are turning their nose up with what you served, try other kinds and possibly change the way you cook via flavoring,sauce etc and make the dinner table rule just like my mother did; take a bite at least. I think that serving up the food on each individual plate also helps.
If there were choice of eat it or not it, and if they were allowed to pick what they want to eat, then, kids would choose not eating what they do not like forever. Be consistent and, make an effort in flavoring etc and don't make the "eat only what they want to eat" as dinner table habit.
Cooking with fresh food in busy daily life..
If you have kids and also work outside the house, you may think that there is little time to spend in the kitchen to cook with fresh ingredients.
However, you can do some things to solve the problems.
One thing you can do is to plan your weekly menu. That way, you know what you will be cooking for the week and easy for you to prepare for your next meal and also budget friendly.
Then, when you make things like meatballs,Pot stickers, spring roll etc from scratch,you can cook only needed amount and,freeze the rest for quick cooking.
If you make pizza from scratch on weekends, if there were leftovers, you can freeze them for later and heat it up for quick lunch.
When you make things like marinaded meat and when you know you like them, marinade doubled amount of the meat you would use for cooking and,use only needed amount and keep the rest frozen. Next time you grill the meat, meat is already being marinaded and ready to be grilled
I think that dinner does not have to be complicated, and it does not have to be fancy. Cooking with fresh food matters. Eliminate processed food in the freezer and swap them with fresh meat etc.
You can also do prep such as slicing onions etc.. before bed and, keep them in the fridge. If there were already being chopped/sliced, it is less time for you to spend in the kitchen when you come home from work.
Another thing you can do is to be creative and use the left over meal for next day's make over dish. This is money saving and also,good for quick cooking for busy mom and dad.
If chopping,slicing were still time consuming for you, consider buying fresh frozen vegetables,but not the one with sauce.
Using slow cooker is also good one because it requires less attention compared to other cooking method and often times, recipe is quite simple and easy.
Last but not least, get your kids involved in the cooking. More hands means less time to spend in the cooking.
With that being said, make a habit of sitting down with your family for dinner. It is such a great feeling to have meal with your family with fun conversation.
All of my time spent with my family back home except the time I came home around 10pm,11pm regularly due long commuting time for job, we family sat down together at the dinner table and we talked and it was good family bonding time.
Stocking the pantry..
Look around your pantry and what would you find in there?
When I go to grocery stores, I see many people's shopping cart is fill with sodas, candies and so forth. Do you have them at home?
If you were to strive for healthy food choices, eliminating or limiting those sodas, candies are the next step.
Everyone knows that sodas are sugary drink,but even diet sodas is not good drink either. Problems in sodas remain because sodas contain phosphoric acid and phosphoru. Also it contains the bubbles called carbon dioxide,which turn to carbonic acid when dissolved in water.
According to Dr Loren Wissner Greene of New York University's Langone Medical Center, Phosphorus helps leech the calcium out from the bone. So, if you drink sodas a lot, not only it is bad due sugar in the drink but also bad for your bone because you get too much phophorus via sodas and reduce the calcium in the bone, and as a result, bones get weaker.
Now, why bubbles are bad for you? Dr Jay writes that the more you drink sodas, you get more carbonic acid in your body and your body needs to neutralize the acid. To neutralize the acid, body would use the calcium from your bones and it weaken the bone strength.
To read the full article by Dr Jay Adlersberg on sodas and bone strength connection, please click here.
If kids were able to take whatever they like even if not so healthy choices such as candies, sodas,chips etc whenever they want, without a doubt, kids would help themselves as they please.
If you were in the habit of stocking up the pantry with not so healthy food, limit/eliminate candies,sodas,chips etc from the pantry..
Just because you can save a lots of money with coupons for hundreds of candies does not mean that you should stock your pantry with sugary snacks.
Get cooking healthy way!
Also, in another previous entry titled "Cooking with fresh ingredients part III", I wrote that under the such great fresh food movement, restaurants are now trying to focus on more fresh food, but I think that most cases, their plates still lack variety of vegetable.
In fact, according to news paper article written by Jennifer Motl, American people are supposed to eat 2 C of fruits and 2 1/2C of vegetable per day, but 75% of them eat fewer than 1.5C of fruits per day, 1/3 C of dark green/orange vegetable and legumes.
She points out that why we fall so short when it comes to vegetable/fruits department are taste,convenience,cost,availability,family habit, and lack of knowledge.
To read full article by Jennifer Motl at fredericksburg.com website,please click here.
I watched the recent season of TV show titled "Food revolution", and it seems that this time, Jamie seemed to have great difficulty to get school and LAUSD on board to bring the healthier lunch menu for kids at school, but there were some positive notes.
School has started growing vegetable/herbs in the school garden, and at the very end, school has also decided to pull the flavored milk from cafeteria.
Also, Jamie has helped one single father family that mostly ate fast food at home motivated to start growing their own vegetables/herbs in the garden and to start cooking with fresh food right out from the garden.
One thing that was new this time was to get fast food store "Patra's" owner on board to start serving healthier hand hold food with better quality ingredient such as 100% grass-fed Angus beef for the burgers, real fresh fruits for smoothies etc for the community.
I thought that although he could not make as much progress as he did in his first season in West Virginia,but overall, it made some small changes and inspired more people for healthy eating with community level so,I thought it was great season.
The Jamie's show is largely focused on school lunch menu, but when you think about it, kids eat food more at home, and food at school is just 1/3 of their daily intake.
Therefore, even though it is good,positive and important movement to make a change with school lunch, parents should step up and start cooking with fresh food at home level,too.
Start your own vegetable gardens,and get kids involved when you cook food..
Starting your own vegetable/herb garden is good one.
Back home in Japan, my parents still grow some vegetables in their garden such as cucumbers,eggplant, potatoes,green peppers,cabbage,sweet potatoes and so forth and, when I was a kid, I was with them helping watering,harvesting, and enjoyed how they grow before my eyes.
Once I helped them harvesting some of the vegetables from the yard, my mother also asked me to help cooking for everyone. I stood next to my mother,and helped her cooking and asked questions why she does this or that, and it was great experience to learn a little bit of tips and tricks.
It was also great moment spent with my mother and, we cooked food together with lots of laughter and a little bit of feeling of accomplishment, and I was a little proud of myself when she said that some of the dishes were made with my help, and my father would go "Hmm,this tastes good!" with big smile.
I also think that kids would most likely try eat vegetables that they helped cooking. It is just that it makes the food taste different if you get involved in the process of cooking, and they would feel it tastes better.
Growing vegetables in your garden is one way for kids to get motivated to try new vegetables. Not only budget friendly, but also nutritionally better since vegetables that do not get picked early for traveling long distance to get to local grocery stores have more time to grow on the vine and contains more vitamin C and B.
Vitamin C and B are very delicate vitamins that degrade over time and some of the vitamins are heat/light sensitive. Therefore, if the vegetable has to travel thousands of miles to get to your local grocery stores, then, vitamins retained in the vegetables get degraded and less vitamins are there by the time it gets served on the plate at home.
Dinner table habits..
Before I write about dinner table rules at home, I will write about school lunch rule.
It has been years since the time I was in the school,and it might have some changes but when I was a kid, back home 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 sheet with nutrient information printed to parents. Usually, menu was based around either rolls or white rice and it comes with a few side dish, and fresh fruits as desert.
In Japan, whoever finished eating goes 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.
I saw many kinds of flavored 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 smoothie.
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 with less vegetables (colorful) plate than kids in Japan.
Not only that, they have choices of menu to pick while I did not have any choice in menu at school and at elementary school years, we kids had to eat everything or at least try the food on the plate. If you did not finish the plate by the time lunch time finishes, you had to sit at the table and eat it while other kids are cleaning the room..
I had a few times I had to sit at the table because I did not like the food on the plate or simply slow to eat compared to other kids in the class room,while they were cleaning the room since already break time is over and cleaning time is on...
It really was not fun at all eating alone,not being able to play with friends but,I think in a way, it helped curbing the attitude toward food "I eat this, not that" and at least, I take a bite with everything on the plate.
At home, dinner usually consists of bowl of rice along with a few side dishes and a bowl of salad and small fruits at the end. When I was a kid, I had a cute small bowl for rice and my mother plated all the side dish in one plate.
Each of the side dish was small amount,but if I saw fish, I whined and said that I would not eat it because I do not like the taste.
My mother was tough and quite consistent at the dinner table,and I had to eat at least a bite of everything even if I did not like them. She kept serving up the side dishes on one plate so that she knows I ate it some,and at the same time, she tried all kinds of sauce and flavoring with things I did not cared for much.
I admit I hated fish,but with her effort of trying different kinds of fish and different kinds of sauce and flavoring, I had one that I really liked even if it were fish. I liked mackerel,sardines etc and it is strange but as I age, my taste buds got changed and now I love fish. I even crave for fish sometimes and order at the restaurant.
With that story in mind, I would like to tell all the mothers in the states that when kids are turning their nose up with what you served, try other kinds and possibly change the way you cook via flavoring,sauce etc and make the dinner table rule just like my mother did; take a bite at least. I think that serving up the food on each individual plate also helps.
If there were choice of eat it or not it, and if they were allowed to pick what they want to eat, then, kids would choose not eating what they do not like forever. Be consistent and, make an effort in flavoring etc and don't make the "eat only what they want to eat" as dinner table habit.
Cooking with fresh food in busy daily life..
If you have kids and also work outside the house, you may think that there is little time to spend in the kitchen to cook with fresh ingredients.
However, you can do some things to solve the problems.
One thing you can do is to plan your weekly menu. That way, you know what you will be cooking for the week and easy for you to prepare for your next meal and also budget friendly.
Then, when you make things like meatballs,Pot stickers, spring roll etc from scratch,you can cook only needed amount and,freeze the rest for quick cooking.
If you make pizza from scratch on weekends, if there were leftovers, you can freeze them for later and heat it up for quick lunch.
When you make things like marinaded meat and when you know you like them, marinade doubled amount of the meat you would use for cooking and,use only needed amount and keep the rest frozen. Next time you grill the meat, meat is already being marinaded and ready to be grilled
I think that dinner does not have to be complicated, and it does not have to be fancy. Cooking with fresh food matters. Eliminate processed food in the freezer and swap them with fresh meat etc.
You can also do prep such as slicing onions etc.. before bed and, keep them in the fridge. If there were already being chopped/sliced, it is less time for you to spend in the kitchen when you come home from work.
Another thing you can do is to be creative and use the left over meal for next day's make over dish. This is money saving and also,good for quick cooking for busy mom and dad.
If chopping,slicing were still time consuming for you, consider buying fresh frozen vegetables,but not the one with sauce.
Using slow cooker is also good one because it requires less attention compared to other cooking method and often times, recipe is quite simple and easy.
Last but not least, get your kids involved in the cooking. More hands means less time to spend in the cooking.
With that being said, make a habit of sitting down with your family for dinner. It is such a great feeling to have meal with your family with fun conversation.
All of my time spent with my family back home except the time I came home around 10pm,11pm regularly due long commuting time for job, we family sat down together at the dinner table and we talked and it was good family bonding time.
Stocking the pantry..
Look around your pantry and what would you find in there?
When I go to grocery stores, I see many people's shopping cart is fill with sodas, candies and so forth. Do you have them at home?
If you were to strive for healthy food choices, eliminating or limiting those sodas, candies are the next step.
Everyone knows that sodas are sugary drink,but even diet sodas is not good drink either. Problems in sodas remain because sodas contain phosphoric acid and phosphoru. Also it contains the bubbles called carbon dioxide,which turn to carbonic acid when dissolved in water.
According to Dr Loren Wissner Greene of New York University's Langone Medical Center, Phosphorus helps leech the calcium out from the bone. So, if you drink sodas a lot, not only it is bad due sugar in the drink but also bad for your bone because you get too much phophorus via sodas and reduce the calcium in the bone, and as a result, bones get weaker.
Now, why bubbles are bad for you? Dr Jay writes that the more you drink sodas, you get more carbonic acid in your body and your body needs to neutralize the acid. To neutralize the acid, body would use the calcium from your bones and it weaken the bone strength.
To read the full article by Dr Jay Adlersberg on sodas and bone strength connection, please click here.
If kids were able to take whatever they like even if not so healthy choices such as candies, sodas,chips etc whenever they want, without a doubt, kids would help themselves as they please.
If you were in the habit of stocking up the pantry with not so healthy food, limit/eliminate candies,sodas,chips etc from the pantry..
Just because you can save a lots of money with coupons for hundreds of candies does not mean that you should stock your pantry with sugary snacks.
Get cooking healthy way!
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