For me, this is easy. I am (healthily) obsessed with cooking - most of the time I would choose to eat my own food to eating out.

Eating healthy is one of the most important things we could do for ourselves and our families - all the time. But right now, when keeping our immune systems performing at the highest capacity could determine life or death, it is indispensable. We need vitamins A, D, E, and C, and minerals like zinc, selenium, iron, and copper to keep our immune systems working well and getting them from food, not supplements is the best way to go.

Now that we are in captivity and spending much more time at home, we have an opening to embrace home cooking and all the physical, emotional and creative joys that come from it. I realize time spent in the kitchen may not be as cathartic to others as it is for me - chopping onions may bring tears to your eyes in more ways than one.

And for you, I write this. Here are some ways to simplify home cooking - and reset the way you think about it.

1. Focus on nutrient density. When I cook, I try to prioritize getting as many nutrients as possible. You may be thinking, great, no wine, no carbs. This mindset around food would make me very unhappy - deprivation has nothing to do with this. It is more about choices. (Low sugar, natural wines, smart carbs). Let your nutrient rich foods be the stars of the show, and let the rest be the supporting actors. (Some examples: dark leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, a rainbow of colored vegetables and fruits, wild salmon, organ meats, bone broth. With every decision we make in life, inclusive of food choices, we are either choosing to a longer and better life, or the opposite.

2. Remove vegetable and seed oils (canola, sunflower, safflower, soy). Stick with extra virgin olive oils, grass fed butters, ghee, tallow, lard.

3. Choose simple recipes and be flexible.  You can do a lot with 5 simple ingredients - and if you find you don’t have all the ingredients you need for a specific recipe, there are many ways to substitute. Often an online search can help you do this. There are thousands of recipes online and thousands of different ways to search for them. (One site I love to explore for new ideas is Food52). Here is a link to a few of my favorite soups, perfect for chillier days. And here is a gut-healing, super nourishing bone broth recipe.

4. Get creative. Find your cooking voice. Different seasonings, dressings and sauces can turn a “plain” meal into a transcendent experience. Be adventurous and willing to experiment.

5. Make more than you think you need. Our neighbors have a guava tree in front of their house. We opened the door a few days ago to find a lovely handwritten note and a jar of homemade guava paste. A thoughtful gesture like this has the ability to change a person’s day - as it did mine. Share your abundance with friends and neighbors. Or, save them for another day. Leftovers can (usually) be frozen.

6. This is a bonus. Have you experimented with intermittent fasting or compressed feeding windows? Now would be a good time. Inadvertently, you’d be cooking (and eating) less and doing your body good - it can help boost immune functioning and cellular clean up. If this is new to you, here are some ways to go about fasting.

If you’d like to talk about meal planning, prepping or even just some ideas for recipes, contact me. It would be my pleasure to help.

Do you have any cooking secrets or stories to share? I would love to hear them.

We've often mentioned micronutrients and eating nutrient dense foods on the blog, but what exactly are we talking about?  Let's start with the small stuff.  

Micronutrients are vitamins, minerals and antioxidants not produced in the body and derived from food.  They are needed in small amounts, but are nonetheless  are vital to development and disease prevention and contribute to functions such as DNA repair, slowing of oxidative damage, protection against infection, energy generation, nervous system balancing and bone mineralization.  Every system in the body depends on micronutrients to thrive.  According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control), over 2 billion people worldwide, including 1/2 of the children up to age 5, are deficient in at least one micronutrient.  Examples of micronutrients include calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, selenium, folate, vitamins A, D and K, zinc, and a whole suite of B vitamins - biotin, niacin, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, thiamin.  Below is a list of micronutrients and their specific functions in the body, taken from the book, Paleo Takes Five - or -  Fewer, by Cindy Sexton.  

Now what about nutrient density?  Very loosely, nutrient density is a term referring to the amount of nutrients packed in a food by volume.  Certain foods such as organ meats and oysters are so jam packed with nutrients, a single serving once a week will supply the body with all the nutrients it needs.   When thinking about which foods to include in your regular meal rotation, it's important to keep this in mind.  What foods give you the biggest bang for the buck?  Aside from organ meats and oysters, herbs and spices, nuts and seeds, cacao, fish and seafood, grass-fed beef, lamb, veal and wild game, vegetables, pork, pastured eggs and dairy (especially grass-fed butter), pastured poultry are at the top of the list.  

The next question is, can one overdo it?  The answer to that is yes.  Just about everything in life is dose dependent.  We increase the chances of developing a food allergy towards foods we over consume.   (The same goes for foods we don't consume enough of)!  This problem is naturally resolved for us by Mother Nature.  It is one of the reasons vegetables grow at specific times of the year and why the availability of animals for hunting and seafood for fishing varies throughout the course of a year.  We are designed to nourish ourselves accordingly, and benefit from the diverse number of nutrients each food has to offer.  Now that we have access to any food we can imagine at anytime of year, it has become easy to abuse the consumption of foods, with the push of a button.  And there, my friends, is an important argument for eating seasonally and locally.  

Having this information makes it somewhat easier to make decisions about what foods are important to have on the menu on a frequent basis.  For us, it is especially useful for feeding our daughter while we still have the ability to control what she eats to some degree.  Now that we are approaching the end of summer and she will be going back to school, you can bet we load her lunches with as many nutrient dense foods we can get in there without totally making her feel like the "weird" kid in her class.

Our next post will be specifically on that...school lunch ideas.  You won't want to miss that one!