TODAYS’S UPDATE:
Your Healthy Cooking For One Recipe Featured!

Dear Friends:

Most of you know that we’ve been slowly working towards launching a food membership website dedicated to EASY healthy meal-planning with accompanying recipes “for ONE” (yes that would be YOU!) called www.YourHealthyCookingForOne.com. 

So many of you expressed interest in our concept and asked us to keep you abreast of our efforts even though we may not be quite ready to launch yet.

As you know, the site is based on our philosophy that balanced healthy cooking and eating habits are really just a matter of healthy life choices.  Towards those ends, “Your Healthy Cooking For One” will provide easy, healthy meal planning, accompanied with recipes and the shopping list necessary to support your simple, pre-planned meal efforts.

How easy will THAT make your life?

So the exciting news?

While in the process of developing this site and its content, one of our healthy recipes was featured in an official newsletter publication from the esteemed Allergy and Environmental Treatment Center located in Phoenix!  (Their newsletters are a myriad of information regarding allergies and managing the environments in which we live.)

Our featured recipe?? 

Tapenade - which is healthy, delicious, impressive, and ridiculously easy to prepare.

We encourage you to visit the newsletter publication, check out our recipe, and give us feedback regarding how you liked the publication as well as your experiences with the delicious Tapenade recipe!  Visit our blog to tell us how you served your Tapenade, how you liked it, and to share the great kudos you received from your guests!

To visit the publication and our featured Tapenade recipe, go to
 http://www.allergyenvironmental.com/PDF_Documents/sep_oct_2009.pdf

We look forward to hearing from you in our blog at
http://www.YourHealthyCookingForOneBlog.com/

Oh,yeah… where are we regarding the website launch? 

Right now we’re writing specifications to entertain bids from experts to professionally design the website. We’re also constantly looking for healthy meal ideas and recipes “for one”, testing each until they’re perfect, and adding them to our ever-expanding arsenal of EASY to prepare, healthy recipes for you to use as you cook for that most mportant person in your world – YOU!

Continued wishes for a happy and healthy September 2009!

We’d LOVE to hear from you!  What do you think?

TODAY’S QUESTION:
Organic or “Not Organic”? 

Ok so we’re back on this “organic” kick again…

In our last posting, we talked about health on a very personal one-on-one level; we discussed the importance of all the “small consistent” choices we make and how they contribute to our overall health.

Today’s discussion is more of the same.  (Do you see a trend here?)

The most important discussion in the community that we hope to spark is the relationship between our “health and healing” and “consistency” - that our health and healing is rarely based on a single dramatic choice (or change)… Rather it’s based on a kind of serial decision making - a mutual respect and love between us and our body, mind, and spirit.

If we consistently love and respect our body, it has a fighting chance to operate like the slick machine that it was designed to be!

So how does all this relate to our “question of the day” regarding whether to buy and use “organic” foods?

Because we cook for “one”, sometimes it’s easier to just dash into the supermarket on our way home and pick up some single-portion-already-prepared-easy-to-pop-in-the-microwave-meal. 

It’s ok… we know it’s tempting.

But let’s pause a moment and examine the basis we’ve already laid in prior posts:
1. Our healthy cooking for one starts with a healthy attitude about our self value.
2. Our balanced healthy diet contributes to our overall balanced health and healing.
3. Our balanced health and healing have a lot to do with CONSISTENTLY choosing balanced healthy lifestyles.
4.  Breathing clean air, eating healthy food, using non-toxic products help lower our overall toxic load.

Let’s talk about “overall toxic load” for a bit.

Our bodies are virtually bombarded with chemicals and toxins every single day.  We are truly the “guinea pig generation” when it comes to “cocktail mixes” of complex environmental, medical, and other toxic (and “non-toxic”) chemicals.

Even chemicals which the FDA (don’t get me started) have noted as “safe”, have rarely been examined in the common mixtures that most folks experience within a normal daily living cycle. 

Think about it for a second…

Our houses and work places are sealed so we breathe all kinds of noxious fumes. 

We’re surrounded by scented products. 

We use potent brews of detergents, cleaning, and preening products in the home and work place, as well as on our bodies. 

Our foods have been engineered, sprayed, treated, and shipped using all kinds of “high tech solutions” to make sure they arrive to us looking pretty as a picture. 

The story goes on and on. 

Our furniture is treated; our clothing is treated; our cars spew out fumes; our factories spew fumes.

We breathe stuff all day long and have NO IDEA what’s in that air. 

We drink water and other beverages and have NO IDEA what’s been put into them.

We eat food from our safe supermarket and have NO IDEA what’s been done to it or added to it along the way.  Then we put it in our microwave and add an additional load of toxins.

Get the idea?

It’s called “Total (or Overall) Toxic Load”.

So before you go off the deep end, let’s rein this discussion in a bit.  Take a deep breath.  Relax. 

Now let’s start over.

On a cellular level, our body knows what to do with good stuff we put into our machine.  When it’s healthy, it also knows how to deal with and rid itself of a good portion of the bad stuff. 

When our body’s total overall toxic load is low, our immune system has a fighting chance – quite literally – to maintain or return to balanced health and healing.

OUR goal is to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff…

As we’ve said before: Control what we can because there’s enough bad stuff out there that we CAN’T control…

You see the tie-in?

One of the HUGE ways we can help keep our overall toxic load in check is to choose “organic” foods and products.

Organic foods are legally regulated to be produced within certain strict growing and production standards which preclude use of conventional pesticides, additives, or processes.  And although it might not be a “perfect” system, it IS a huge step in the right direction.

In the past, finding organic food was quite the exercise.  However, since the early 1990s, the yearly growth rate of the organic food industry has been around 20%. Present statistics show that organic food now accounts for 1-2% of food sales worldwide.  (It’s probably safe to guess that figure is much higher in the U.S.)

Future growth of the organic foods industry is expected to range from 10-50% annually.  That’s further good news.  It means that availability of organic foods is definitely trending toward “mainstream”.  It’s certainly getting easier to find.

(Did we just remove another objection?)

So enough preaching… how’s this relate to “Your Healthy Cooking For One”?

As we say time and again: it’s not a glitzy message. 

It’s about balanced lifestyle choices.

It’s about consistent healthy habits.

It’s about making healthy cooking part of our every-day world. 

And it’s about knowing that WE have it easy!  Unlike some of our friends and family members that cook for more than “one”, we are solely responsible to make and control the decisions for the single most important person in our world – US! 

Once again – here’s the simple message: Avoid processed and chemical/preservative-laden foods and choose organic natural ingredients for Your Healthy Cooking For One! 

We want to hear from you!  What do you think?

TODAYS’S QUESTION:
What role do you think a “balanced healthy diet” plays in overall health and healing? 

In our last posting, we agreed that your healthy cooking for one starts with a healthy attitude about self value.  Today’s posting takes the next step and talks about one way that a balanced healthy diet contributes to overall balanced health and healing.

So many folks seem to look for the “easy immediate” cure… the “silver bullet” approach to health and healing. 

Well I’m not sure that silver bullet exists. 

I truly believe that balanced health and healing has more to do with consistently choosing balanced healthy lifestyles. 

Because folks seem to want a “simplified” way to look at this, and after much thought, I decided to mention 3 things that give us a huge “bang for our buck” in terms of simplicity and payback.

Let’s look at 3 core areas:

1. Our Air – What we breathe includes several environmental issues.  Control what we can in terms of the air we breathe, the toxins we come in contact with, etc.  Remember that most perfumes and scented products that we use on ourselves and in our environment contribute to the overall toxic load our body/immune system must deal with.

2. Our Food – What we eat and drink, includes the food we prepare and consume.  Control the kinds of things we eat, how they are grown, processed, and how we prepare them for our final consumption.  Remember that chemicals and additives in our foods contribute to the overall toxic load our body/immune system must deal with.

3. Our Skin – This includes products and things our skin comes in contact with during the course of a normal day, as well as the stuff we knowingly slather all over ourselves.  Remember that the skin is the body’s largest organ of elimination.  Toxins in our food and water, as well as in the air we breathe, must be dealt with and eliminated on a constant basis.  One of the main avenues of elimination is our skin.  And we tend to gunk up the works by smearing all kinds of gooey, chemical-laden products on our skin.

So how does all this relate to Your Healthy Cooking For One blog? 

See number 2 above? 

What we choose to put in our bodies affects every living cell that we own.  On a cellular level, the body knows what to do with the good stuff we put into our machine.  When it’s healthy, it also knows how to deal with and rid itself of the bad stuff.  The goal is to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff…

Look at it this way:  Control what we can because there’s enough bad stuff out there that we CAN’T control…

If we keep our body’s total overall toxic load minimized by controlling what we can, our body more efficiently deals with much of the bad stuff – naturally!

When our body’s total overall toxic load is low, our immune system has a fighting chance – quite literally – to maintain or return to balanced health and healing.

So enough preaching… how’s this relate to our topic of “Your Healthy Cooking For One”?

Once again, it’s not glitzy. 

It’s about balanced lifestyle choices.

It’s about consistent healthy habits.

It’s about making healthy cooking part of our every-day world. 

And because we cook for the most important person in our world (that’s us), we’re encouraging to give our body/immune system a fighting chance by

1. Using organic foods whenever possible. Why?  Control as many chemicals and toxins due to “growing” and “preparing” as we can. 

2. Wash fruits and vegetables before consumption.  Why? Control as many chemicals and toxins related to growing, shipping, and handling as we can.

3. Cook with fresh ingredients as much as possible.  Why?  Control as many chemicals and toxins related to processing, preparation, and preservatives (to enhance shelf life) as we can.

4. Minimize use of microwave.  Why? Control as many chemicals and toxic byproducts as we can.

5. Eliminate processed sugars.  Why? Control as many chemicals and toxins as we can.  Sugar is harsh on our immune system.

Balanced healthy cooking and eating habits are really just a matter of healthy life choices:

1. When you shop, look for organic products; be a label reader; become aware of ingredients.  A good rule of thumb: if you can’t pronounce it, you probably don’t want to eat it!  Notice how many food products use sugar as a cheap “filler” and other chemicals to mask or enhance flavors.

2. When cooking, use stove-top, oven, and broiler.  Balance your meals with plenty of raw, fresh, organic foods.  A little planning ahead, and you can kick out a healthy balanced meal in 30-60 minutes depending on your choices.

3. Use naturally sweet products to satisfy that sweet tooth of yours… fruit, fruit juice, agave, honey, rice syrup (to name a few) are each sweet with a slightly different flavor.

At this point, I’m sure you get the simple message: Avoid processed and chemical/preservative-laden foods and choose organic natural ingredients for Your Healthy Cooking For One! 

We want to hear from you!  What do you think?

 TODAYS’S QUESTION:
What are your biggest hurdles regarding “cooking for one”? 
• “Fear” – not knowing what to cook? 
• “Monotony” – tired of the same-old-stuff? 
• “Time” – I don’t have it?
• “Recipes” – do recipes for “one serving” even exist?
• Or something entirely different?

After cooking for myself for many years, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that healthy cooking for one – namely me – must start with a healthy attitude about my value to myself.  Do you agree? 

When folks start talking about this subject of “healthy cooking for one”, I’m always surprised at the reaction to my simple question: “Don’t you think you’re worth it?” 

Most folks are stopped cold… I can tell… something about the open mouth with no sound coming out… even if it’s just for that split second till “recovery”…

So here we are… getting ready to launch this great adventure “Your Healthy Cooking For One”… and I’d like to ask YOU  the same question:

Are you worth it?

Kinda gets you thinking differently, doesn’t it?

So tell me… what truly does hold you back? 

I’d love to hear about it… Because then I’d like to DO something about those barriers…

I’d also like to hear your comments regarding the flip side of that question too: 
• What things do you LOVE about cooking for one? 
• What things would you like see on this blog site? 

I also invite you to share your tried and true recipes with the rest of us who are “cooking for one”…

And for the record… I think you’re worth it…