Category Archives: Sound Nutrition

Make Your Dishes Do Double Duty for Better Leftovers

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One of the My Nourish Mentor crew mentioned during a session on meal planning recently that she loved the tips for getting creative with leftovers … especially now that summer’s here. I agree. Whether it’s the heat or just wanting to squeeze every little drop out of these long days, I’m less motivated to start meals from scratch every night of the week. So I look for ways to make the dishes I do cook do double duty.

double-duty-summer-leftoversI mentioned three ideas for getting creative with leftovers at Thanksgiving. Here are three more geared towards summertime:

  • Plan ahead and make extra. While the piece on Thanksgiving leftovers is about using up what you already have, in summertime you have to be a bit more deliberate. Especially if you’re grilling, double the amount so you’ll have leftovers to work with. Alberto’s Marinated Grilled Asparagus, for instance, makes great picnic fare the next day.
  • Think cool. Odds are when you do cook,  you’ll eat your dinner hot off the grill (or out of the sauté pan). But flip the coin, too, and think of how the leftovers would shine when chilled. Like tossing these Spicy Sweet Shrimp in a fresh Glass Noodle Salad the next day.
  • Season boldly. It’s one thing to have leftover steak (yawn). Entirely another to have a Spice Rubbed Skirt Steak to star in South of the Border Steak Salad with Grilled Peppers and Corn Salsa. Boldly flavored foods bring personality to reimagined leftovers later in the week, keeping your meals from being just ho-hum.

What are your favorite “take two” ideas?

Granita, granita!

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The first time I made granita I was in fourth grade. We were putting together a “cultural” cookbook and potluck lunch, and I pulled China and Italy out of the hat. After much deliberation, my Mom and I settled on Choo Choo Rice and Lemon Granita for the spread.

granita-postI don’t remember much about the Choo Choo Rice, but I do remember being enamored with granita. Who knew I could make my very own snow cone in our freezer with nothing more than a fork? My tastes have grown up since then, but my adoration of granita remains.

Granitas are a great way to show off seasonal fruits and herbs, and incredibly refreshing—whether as a palate cleanser in between courses, as a mid-day pick me up, or for dessert—in summer heat. Here are three simple steps to making your own:

Step 1 – Make a Flavorful Base – Granita is mostly water mixed with a little sweetener. Where it gets fun is in the juices and infusions you use to flavor the base. I love to use fragrant herbs, like the lemon verbena down below and different variations of basil, but zests and aromatics like ginger also work well. Blood orange makes for an especially colorful granita. You can really get creative here. Just bring the water and sweetener (honey and agave syrup work just as well as sugar) to a boil. Then turn off the heat, stir in the juice and flavorings and let steep for 30 minutes.

Step 2 – Strain and Chill – Once the mixture has steeped, strain the liquid into shallow pan and chill in the freezer for an hour.

Step 3 – Scrape it Into Granules – After an hour, the mixture will begin to form ice crystals. Use the tongs of an overturned fork to scrape the mixture and separate the granules. Freeze for another 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the consistency you want your granita to be, scraping two or three more times to keep the mixture nice and fluffy.

While water is the most common liquid to use, I’ve also been wanting to experiment with buttermilk and wine. What’s your favorite flavor of granita?

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Peach Primer: 5 Ways with Fresh Peaches

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I hail from California, which is the top peach-producing state. But it took a detour to Birmingham, Alabama, deep in the heart of Dixie, for me to fully appreciate the versatility of this stone fruit. There, residents take pride in Chilton County peaches, which are abundant, sweet, and fragrant. Come summer, the fruit fills local farmers’ markets and roadside stands. Chefs work them into menus, from salads to barbecue sauce to pies, crumbles, and ice cream.

peach-primer-postChoosing Peaches

Wherever you live, peaches are abundant now, so choose the best you can find. Ripe fruit should be heavy for its size, soft (but not mushy) to the touch, and smell sweet and slightly floral. Peaches fall into two categories: early-season clingstones and later-season freestones. With a clingstone, the flesh clings to the pit for dear life. To remove the pit, halve the fruit, twist the halves apart, and use a paring knife or spoon to loosen the pit so you can pull it out. With a freestone, you can halve the peach and the pit will pull away easily.

Using Peaches

There are lots of ways to use peaches. By June, the weather in Birmingham would be stinkin’ hot and humid, and I found cool refreshment in the peach margaritas poured at the bar at Little Savannah. (The recipe is a closely guarded secret, so if you ever find yourself in Birmingham in summer, you’ll need to make a pilgrimage to get one.) In the meantime, here are five more ways to make the most of your peaches:

  • In a salad: Slice peaches over arugula and toss with balsamic vinaigrette. Sprinkle with a little goat cheese.
  • On the grill: Halve and pit peaches; brush the cut sides with a little vegetable oil. Put them cut-side-down on a hot grill, and cook until tender. Top with honey-sweetened Greek yogurt and chopped, toasted almonds.
  • Baked in dessert: Substitute 4 cups chopped, peeled peaches and 2 cups fresh blueberries for the fresh cherries and cranberries in our Cherry Almond Crumble (omit the dried fruit).
  • To drink: As I discovered in Alabama, peaches do well in libations. Substitute peach for watermelon and mint for basil in our Watermelon-Basil Agua Fresca. Add a splash of tequila if it has been a long week.
  • As a condiment: I got a little homesick when living in Alabama, so salsa was my favorite way to use the annual bumper crop of peaches. A light supper of salad, quesadilla, and fresh peach salsa made me feel a little more at home in Dixie.

Healthy Made Convenient

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By Alison Ashton

After Hurricane Katrina rolled through the Gulf States five years ago, a friend headed to his family’s home in south Mississippi to clean up the damage. While he was there, the military came by, distributing MRE (meals ready to eat) like they were edible Mardi Gras beads. My friend accepted some and passed them along to his wife, who was my coworker. She brought them to work, where several of us gathered in the communal kitchen to sample some guv’ment fare. It was OK–and probably very welcomed by thousands of overwhelmed souls busy setting up house in FEMA trailers. When time and resources are tight, your definition of “good” broadens” considerably.

At NOURISH Evolution, we advocate cooking from scratch with fresh, whole, seasonal foods. But we also live in the real world, where long days can make getting healthy food on the table for dinner challenging. We’ve offered cook-ahead strategies to stock the freezer, shared speedy recipes that come together faster than ordering a pizza, and suggested equipment like pressure cookers that make quick work of cooking beans and grains.

Sometimes even those are a stretch, though, and it helps to have some of the work done for you. Lately, I’ve notice a wider range of steamed, shelf-stable, refrigerated or frozen legumes, grains, and vegetables that make healthy cooking convenient.

healthy-convenience-postLegumes. I’ve become a fan of vacuum-packed, steamed, ready-to-eat black-eyed peas, lentils, and various kinds of beans distributed nationwide by Melissa’s (I’ve also found refrigerated and shelf-stable varieties at Trader Joe’s). They typically have less sodium than their canned counterparts (rinsing canned beans washes away only about a third of the sodium) and much nicer texture. These steamed legumes are firm and hold their shape.

Whole grains. We’ve sung the praises of Village Harvest’s line of frozen, cooked grains, including quinoa, brown rice, and wild rice. These have terrific texture, and you can pour out what you need and put the rest back in the freezer. (I’ve used the quinoa to speed up preparation of Curry Quinoa Cakes.) Trader Joe’s also has its own label of frozen cooked grains, as well as shelf-stable versions.

Veggies. While I prefer using fresh beets with a big bouquet of greens still attached to make something like Mama Kourtesi’s Beet and Green Salad, there are hectic evenings when I appreciate the convenience of peeled and steamed baby beets that I can add to a salad or slice over pizza. Items like steamed, sliced carrots also are a fast way to add color–and nutrition–to salads and side dishes.

Products like these make it a lot faster to eat healthily on crazy days, but there are some caveats. You’ll pay a premium for the convenience. For instance, a 20-ounce bag of frozen cooked brown rice is $5, which would buy you a 32-ounce bag of uncooked rice (uncooked rice from the bulk bins costs even less). And while many of these items have little or no added salt, others may have more. If salt’s a concern, check the sodium tally on the Nutrition Facts label.

This Mississippi “Caviar” isn’t quite an MRE, but with the help of some ready-to-eat components, it’s close. And it tastes a heck of a lot better, trust me.

alison-thumbA longtime editor, writer, and recipe developer, Alison Ashton is a Cordon Bleu-trained chef and the Editorial Director for NOURISH Evolution. She has worked as a features editor for a national wire service and as senior food editor for a top food magazine. Her work has appeared in Cooking Light, Vegetarian Times, and Natural Health as well as on her blog, Eat Cheap, Eat Well, Eat Up.

Learn to Love Your Vegetables

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A few years back, I interviewed Mollie Katzen—the vegetable guru—for a profile in Prevention Magazine and she spoke about a concept that really resonated with me. She talked about teaching to love vegetables rather than just telling people to eat more of them and—flash—I realized that the shift from “gotta do” to “want to do” was precisely when everything changed for me.

love your vegetablesClockwise from left: Roasted Winter Veggies; Sauteed Radishes with Mint; Garlic Parsnip Fries; Fennel and Granny Smith Salad with Blue Cheese

Sure, I’d learned through my writing that vegetables were incredible allies in health and weight management. Yes, I’d become aware of their role in eco-clean eating, and those reasons alone made me want to eat more of them. But it wasn’t until I began experimenting with a variety of veggies in ways I hadn’t thought of before—often inspired by people like Mollie—that I discovered the most compelling reason to eat vegetables yet … they can be downright delicious. And this from someone who detested vegetables (other than lettuce, raw carrots and cucumbers) well into her twenties, so was against all odds we became an item.

Here, in one neat little package, are the reasons I fell in love:

Vegetables reduce risk of heart disease

Several studies around the world have concluded that people who eat more vegetables are less prone to heart disease. One of the most wide-ranging studies, looking at nearly 85,000 women over a period of eight years, concluded that each additional serving (1/2 cup for most, 1 cup for leafy ones) of veggies a day reduced risk of heart disease by 4%. Pretty significant! Vegetable’s cocktail of micronutrients (called phytonutrients) are probably a major contributor.

Vegetables can help you maintain a healthy weight

Many studies have looked at associations between diet and weight, but some are now beginning to specifically analyze whether people who eat more vegetables weigh less. Initial results look like indeed they do. One of the theories behind why this is so is that vegetables are less calorically dense (or energy dense) than other food groups (and, at the same time, more nutrient dense).

Eating more vegetables (and less meat) can reduce your carbon footprint

Many people don’t recognize that livestock farming—the intensive concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—that most of our meat comes from produces more greenhouse gas than all forms of transport combined (18% of global, man-made greenhouse gas emissions). It also uses a great deal of water. It takes an average of 22,000 gallons of water—22,000!—to produce just over 2 pounds of beef.

Eating vegetables is FUN!

Eating seasonal, locally grown vegetables opens up whole new worlds of foods to play with. It’s like a Dr. Seuss book—your carrots can be orange, white or purple, and your cauliflower the same. Radishes can be red hot and spicy, or icy white and sweet or a gorgeous hue of magenta. If you don’t like steamed broccoli, try roasting it. If you don’t like boiled carrots, try sautéing them with a bit of spice.

Don’t just eat more vegetables (boorrrinnng) … fall in love with them.

When “Light” is Right

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by Lia Huber

Here on NOURISH Evolution, we often advocate indulging in a little bit of the real deal. But, given that an excess of those pesky little things called calories will cause us to gain weight, there are times when, with certain ingredients, I’ll opt to go light. Here’s where I draw the line:

light-right

  • If you don’t notice the difference—or if you don’t care about it—opt for the lighter version. I’d rather not ingest extra calories on something that tastes the same to me and doesn’t lose any nutritional value (or gain any fake ingredients) in a lighter form. For me, that tends to be dairy products (minus cheese). I think light sour cream and Greek yogurt taste just as good as their full-fat counterparts, and in fact I prefer their fluffier texture (I don’t, however, go for the fat-free versions; those just taste unnatural to me). I’ll also use neuftachel cheese in my cheesecakes to shave off a few calories and have yet to notice a difference. There is even a particular brand of potato chip whose reduced fat version I prefer to their full fat; I find them a touch crispier and less greasy. The net is, I’m banking calories on foods where I don’t feel like I’m making a compromise so I can cash them in on ones that I do (like cheese).
  • If the ingredient is playing a supporting role, experiment with how light you can go. Mayonnaise is a great example. If I’m just throwing together a tuna salad for weekday sandwiches or using a bit of mayo as a binder, I’ll likely opt for a light version. If I’m whipping up a dip I might combine both light and regular, especially if there’s a strong flavor like curry or garlic permeating it. But if I’m making a BLT with height-of-the-summer tomatoes, you can bet that I’ll either be using the best full-fat version I can find or making my own. In that case, the mayo is integral to the meal.
  • If it’s something you really love, go all out, in small portions, occasionally. The other night I was craving a tin roof sundae, a favorite childhood dessert of mine. I made one with fat-free ice cream, sub-par chocolate sauce and unsalted peanuts that I’d accidentally grabbed from the grocery store shelf. Guess how I’d felt when I finished the bowl? I was still craving a tin roof sundae. What I’d eaten was missing all of the elements I love about tin roofs—the creamy ice cream and rich chocolate sauce, the interplay between salty and sweet, creamy and crunchy. I’d cut corners everywhere and gotten no satisfaction whatsoever. The point is, you’ll feel satiated, crave less and ultimately end up eating less if you let yourself indulge in the real versions of the things you love, in reasonable quantities, every once in a while.

Look at Your Food Labels

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Alison’s piece last week on egg labels got me thinking about how confusing it can be to evaluate foods. So I thought I’d distill some solid rules of thumb to help you choose wisely when in the packaged aisles.

look-at-your-food-labels

Understand

The Ingredient List: On labels, ingredient lists are ordered by weight, which means there’s a large amount of whatever comes first. If “unbleached flour” is the first ingredient listed, you’re getting mostly refined flour. If it comes after a whole grain or somewhere in the middle of the list, then you know it’s not the primary ingredient.

The Nutrition Facts Panel: The purpose of the Nutrition Facts panel is to give a healthy range of major nutrients to consume during the course of a day—this much fat, that much vitamin C, this much fiber. The issue is, there are hundreds of other nutrients that simply aren’t listed and that can make us myopic in our concept of what makes food healthy. To add complexity, nutrients don’t act in a vacuum. They interact with each other. The bottom line? Use the Nutrition Facts panel as a guide, but don’t take it as definitive.

Avoid

These are the ingredients I try, at all costs, to avoid:

#1: Partially Hydrogenated Oil. There is no refuting the evidence that trans fats—which are the product of partially hydrogenated oils—are no good for us. As in, they can dramatically increase the risk of heart disease. Your best bet is not to buy—or eat—anything with partially hydrogenated oils (a label can have partially hydrogenated oil in the ingredients list yet claim 0 grams trans fats if it contains less than 0.5 grams trans fats . . . which can still add up to several grams of trans fats a day).

#2: High Fructose Corn Syrup. I have always been suspect of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) simply because it shows up where it has no business being. In breads. In hot dog buns. In French fries. It’s one thing to debate whether HFCS is worse than sugar in a soda, where you’d expect a sweetener to be, and entirely another to have to remain vigilant against it infiltrating your pretzels. In any case, there is new evidence that high fructose corn syrup may indeed contribute to weight gain and is associated with illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. A recent study at Princeton University, in which rats fed water sweetened with HFCS became obese across the board (those fed water sweetened with sugar did not), hypothesizes that the culprit may be the chemical makeup of HFCS. Sugar molecules have an extra step for the body to metabolize whereas HFCS molecules are “unbound” and available for use immediately, which may explain why the body reacts differently to the two forms of fructose.

#3 Fillers and Preservatives. Nowadays, it’s no big deal to see an ingredients list as long as our palm. But how many of those ingredients are actually food? Watch out for lists that include a plethora of unfamiliar terms. They may sound intimidating and, strangely enough, credentialed for that very reason, but the truth is they’re most likely there to

  • Make the food more shelf stable (i.e., keep it from spoiling … but please don’t equate “spoiling” with bad in foods; it’s what they’re supposed to do after a reasonable period of time)
  • Make the texture or mouth feel of unnatural or low-quality ingredients more appealing
  • Mask the flavor of other chemicals

Do any of these make the product better for you? No. In fact, several studies have revealed that many of these “food-safe” chemicals may pose health risks.

This week, have a close look at your labels.

Get a New Grain: What is Quinoa?

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What the heck is quinoa? You’ve probably heard about quinoa at some point by now—in a magazine, by a chef on a show. But is it really up to the hype? In a word: Yes.

whole-grain-what-is-quinoa-postWhat it Looks Like: Quinoa kernels look like little flat, ivory beads (red quinoa is a lovely burgundy hue). When cooked, the germ detaches from the grain like a little tail, making the quinoa look like a bowl of tiny commas.

What it Tastes Like: Quinoa is flavorful enough to be interesting, but mild enough to be versatile. It has a nutty note and slight “pop” when you bite into it.

How to Cook it: Unless you buy a box that’s labeled “pre-rinsed,” be sure to rinse the grains well to wash off the bitter saponin coating (a naturally-occurring insect repellent). Just swish them around in a fine-mesh strainer until the water runs clear and there are no suds. To cook, bring 2 cups water or liquid to a boil. Stir in 1 cup quinoa, cover, reduce heat and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

How to Use it: Quinoa makes gorgeous salads, but it also works as a pilaf, a morning porridge or even in crispy quinoa cakes (see ours below).

Additional Notes: Quinoa is unique in that it’s a “complete protein.” What that means, exactly, is that it contains all seven essential amino acids in correct proportion for our bodies to use effectively, just like it does the proteins in meat or eggs. It is native to South America and was the major source of protein for the ancient Incans.

(For more information on whole grains, see Gotta Get Your Grains.)

The Last Supper … A Sign of Supersizing?

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Brian Wansink, one of our favorites and the author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, teamed up with his brother, Craig Wansink, to conduct a study recently. Only his brother isn’t a fellow scholar of eating behavior; he’s a professor of religious studies at Virginia Wesleyan College. The two cross-pollinated their specialties to take a look at portion sizes as represented by 52 paintings of the Last Supper over the past millennium.

wansinkThe result? According to the Wansinks’ study, as reported in the International Journal of Obesity, expanding portion sizes are not a new phenomenon. In the paintings the brothers studied, main courses in the feast grew by 69%, plate size by 66%, and bread size by 23%.

Americans, though, seem particularly prone to supersizing our portions. An average meal in France is 25 percent smaller than one in America, according to a 2003 University of Pennsylvania comparison. The study also found that a typical carton of yogurt sold in Philadelphia was 82 percent larger than one offered in Paris, and a soft drink was 52 percent larger. In Japan, foods also come in smaller sizes and are often eaten out of bowls, rather than large plates or platters.

Here are three things you can do to stop portions from expanding on your table:

1)     Envision It. Measure out healthy portions of foods you commonly eat in your own tableware. What does a half cup of pasta look like in your bowl? What does a tablespoon of peanuts look like in a small dish? Once you have a visual snapshot, you won’t have to continually measure to know you’re getting a healthy portion size.

2)     Be Mindful. It’s natural to feel like you’re being deprived when your portion sizes are smaller than you’re used to. But when we shift our attitude to fully reveling in what’s in front of us, we end up even more satisfied than if we ate a larger amount while being less mindful.

3)     Fill Up. If you’re concerned you’ll still be hungry after eating less food, make an effort to include fiber-rich foods—like lentils, vegetables and whole grains—which keep us full longer.

The Great Burrito Challenge: Fast Versus Fresh

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by Cheryl Sternman Rule

Faster, faster, faster! As the dinner hour approaches, time seems to speed up and the thought of cooking a from-scratch meal may overwhelm even the most well-intentioned among us. Ever count how many drive-thrus you pass on your commute home from work? I hope you’re a math genius, because the numbers add up remarkably fast. It’s no surprise that the cheap price and sheer convenience of fast food makes it a seductive option for millions of Americans each day.

But what if we broke down the “cost” of that convenience into all of its correlating parts? The quality of the ingredients; the nutritional profile of the meal; the financial cost; the environmental impact; time; flavor, texture and color; and the social experience at the dinner table. Only by examining all of these factors can we truly gauge whether, on busy nights, the drive-thru is truly the better option.

fast-freshTo do this, I served the same meal—beef and bean burritos—on two consecutive nights.  The first night, the meal came from Taco Bell’s drive-thru.  (My children looked at me in bug-eyed horror when I announced my assignment. Had I, their mother, been body-snatched by an alien?) The second night, I attempted to replicate the same burritos at home. I don’t claim that this was a 100% scientific comparison, but the overarching lessons are revealing nonetheless.

Ingredients: Props to Taco Bell for making it very easy to see exactly what is in their food. The full ingredients list of the Beefy 5-Layer Burritos I purchased can be found online here (click “see what’s inside” and then “ingredient details). It doesn’t take long to see hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils, artificial colors, and preservatives among the flour, beef, cheese, sour cream, and beans. Could it be worse? Sure, but when I made similar burritos at home (see recipe below), I was able to mimic the final meal with far fewer overall ingredients, without hydrogenated oils and with fewer preservatives, colorings, and chemicals. I also cooked with organic, grass-fed beef, organic tortillas, organic beans, and organic low-fat sour cream. Winner? My version.

Nutrition: One Taco Bell Beefy 5-Layer Burrito had 550 calories, 8 grams of saturated fat, 1640 milligrams of sodium, and 9 grams of fiber. The sodium is especially interesting: a single burrito contained 71 percent of the daily recommended limit (2,300).  My homemade burrito, which I served with romaine and mashed avocado, had the same amount of saturated fat, but fewer calories (488), more fiber (11g), and, at 871mg, slightly more than half the sodium of Taco Bell’s. The avocado in my version also added healthy unsaturated fat. Winner?  My version.

Financial cost: Here’s where fast food blows all competition out of the water. I’d tucked $20 in my pocket before setting out for the drive-thru, assuming the burritos would cost about $5 apiece. I was stunned to see the final price: $.89 per burrito, plus tax. It took me a minute to realize what that meant: fast food is so shockingly cheap, it’s difficult for any fresh food to come close. My homemade burritos costed out at roughly $2.05 per burrito, which is more than twice as much, but still inexpensive by almost any standard (a family of four could eat my meal for $8.20), especially given that most of my ingredients were organic and the beef was grass-fed. From a purely financial perspective, though, the fast food was cheaper, hands down. Winner?  Taco Bell.

Eco-cost: Each Taco Bell burrito came wrapped separately in paper and the order was packed in a plastic bag. My raw ingredients, of course, had plenty of packaging, too. But are there additional environmental costs to the fast food meal? The feedlots where cattle are generally raised and slaughtered for fast food are likely to exert a much higher environmental toll that the grass-grazing cows used to make the beef in my burritos. The organic veggies in my version didn’t require the use of pesticides, either. Don’t forget that environmental costs can often be quite complex, extending deeper than merely the final packaging. Winner?  My version.

Time: From the time I told my kids to get their shoes on to the time we sat down to our drive-thru meal, exactly 18 minutes had elapsed. When I cooked the burritos myself (from ingredients I had already purchased), it took exactly 22 minutes to get the food on the table. The drive-thru saved only 4 minutes. Winner? Taco Bell, but barely.

Flavor, texture & color: If the Taco Bell burrito hadn’t had the 18 ingredient nacho cheese sauce, the two meals might have tasted similar. But the cheese sauce, which included an unidentified catchall “natural flavor,” lent the TB burrito a gooeyness and impossible-to-replicate taste. Texturally, the TB burrito was mushier, too; the tortilla continued to steam in its paper wrapping and plastic bag, so when we got it home it had softened considerably. By contrast, heating my tortillas individually over a gas flame imparted a great puffy crispness. Serving a 2-minute side of mashed avocado and shredded romaine with lime added color, texture, and freshness to the home-cooked meal.  Winner? My version.

The overall dining experience: When we returned from the drive-thru, it seemed silly to put out placemats or even plates. We tossed the bag of food on the table, ate it straight from the packaging, and finished the meal in less than 10 minutes. Two of us woke up in the middle of the night to drink water, which is unusual. Was our thirst from the high sodium content? I can’t say for sure, but it’s possible. When eating our homemade burritos, we set the table properly and took our time discussing our days, and the differences between the two meals. Winner?  My version.

So what’s the lesson here? There are actually several. Fast food is cheaper, yes, but it’s not all that much faster if you have your ingredients handy, and the hidden costs are greater than they may at first appear. Ultimately, remember this: if you need to, you really can cook a 20 minute dinner using organic, quality ingredients—and avoiding most artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives—for less than $10 for a family of four. And (trust me on this) you and your family will feel a lot better if you prepare the meal yourself.

cheryl-thumb

Cheryl Sternman Rule is a food and nutrition writer whose work has appeared in numerous national magazines, including EatingWell and Body+Soul. She is the voice behind the food blog 5 Second Rule.