When following a healthier, whole foods diet, busy schedules and between-meal snacks can become a challenge. So I prepared some tips that might help give you the upper hand you need to stay on top of a whole foods diet and keep the processed, convenience food to a bare minimum.
Read More5 Fabulous, Nutritionally Dense Foods for Spring
It’s spring at the Farmers Market! If you are like me, you are guilty of over doing it during the Spring months with more fresh, fabulous produce than you can possibly eat in a week. It is hard to reel in, focus and choose from all the stuff that the farmers are bringing us this time of year. So, I have an idea. How about taking some of that “kid in a candy shop” excitement and enthusiasm, and channelling it into getting more nutrition out of your next Farmers Market visit? I used a sampling from the ANDI scale, developed by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, MD, to help identify some of the most nutritionally dense foods that are in season and hanging around the Farmers Market right about now.
Read MoreVegan Cream of Mushroom Soup
Looking for a quick comfort food to whip up after a stressful day at work? This Vegan Cream of Mushroom soup delivers creamy, delicious comfort the right way- with clean, wholesome plant-based nutrition. Check out the instructional video below for step by step instructions!
Read MoreHearty Warm Salad for Busy Weeknights
This hearty warm salad is a quick, easy way to get a plant based, super nutritious, and filling meal into your busy week. All you need is to make sure you have a good variety of vegetables and starchy vegetables on hand. You can pretty much substitute any ingredient here for whatever you want to use up in your kitchen. This recipe proves that healthy doesn’t have to be hard!
Read More3 Reasons Why Fast Weight Loss Never Works
We see it over and over again – people want to lose weight. They don’t feel great about how they look and so they go to a “fast weight loss” program that promises quick and easy results. Sometimes, those programs even deliver – in the short term. Which is perfect if you only want to lose weight for a short period of time, say for a wedding or other special occasion. But most people would probably rather shed unwanted weight for good, if asked to give their honest intentions.
The problem with fast weight loss (and the reason it never works in the long run) is that your body isn’t designed to lose weight fast. As soon as you
Read More4 Ways to Create Healthy Lifestyle Habits that Last
Sometimes no matter how much great nutrition advice we get, it really comes down to our ability to create sustainable healthy lifestyle habits. With that, I created this quick “pop-up” blog post to help readers simplify their healthy lifestyle routines. See if you can apply any of this to your day-to-day life. Enjoy, and tell me what you think in the comments!
Start Early in the Day
Your willpower tends to be highest at the beginning of the day, so harness that energy and use it to your advantage. A great example is crockpot cooking: your desire to be healthy can motivate you to toss ingredients into a crockpot in the morning, so you’re not dealing with cooking when you’re tired after a long day at work.
Read MoreTuscan Kale Soup with Sausage
Many of my recent clients are following a Paleo-leaning or AIP (Autoimmune Paleo) diet, part of which requires obtaining high nutrient density per calorie. So, I have been delving into meals that fit that profile. I am finding that this style of cooking does not have to be complicated at all. I love it when something really simple comes out delicious and nutritionally complex. Enter this quick, rainy day soup. Not only is it Paleo, but it’s clean, weight management friendly, and can be converted to vegan very easily. If you want to go vegan and are not concerned about avoiding certain plant based foods, you can replace the sausage with cannellini beans, but since the sausage brings some flavor to the soup, you may need to ramp up the herbs and garlic to compensate.
Lime & Sea Salted Watermelon & Avocado Salad
I love it when something is so ridiculously simple it almost doesn’t make sense. I have been extremely busy developing some new flex foods to compliment a new cleanse product that I have been offering on my Whole, Clean & Green Challenge. The cleanse protocol specifies a very short list of flex foods, so I was limited to basically just citrus juice and sea salt for any kind of dressing. I was delighted to discover how flawless and wonderful just watermelon, avocado, lime, and sea salt taste when combined together. And therefore I had to share it on the blog! You can make this in about three minutes. Drizzle some avocado oil on top if you must, but it really isn’t necessary.
Riced Cauliflower Salad with Tomato, Basil & Garlic
I’m having a “mini-series” of riced cauliflower in my kitchen! Riced cauliflower is great as a raw salad, because cauliflower florets are already slightly tender and porous to start with, so, when mixed with other salad ingredients it makes a great base! So, a while, back, I tried using it as you would pasta in a classic “TBG” (tomato, basil, garlic) salad, and the results were delicious.
Saffron Riced Cauliflower
The other day I picked up a bag of “riced cauliflower” at the market, for the first time. I have been playing around with it, both hot and as a raw salad, with delightful results. In fact, the other day I posted a candid quickie of a raw riced cauliflower salad I had created for lunch, that invoked such a positive response in the social media world, I have decided to do two “riced cauliflower” recipes in a row on here. First though, I want to share this extremely simple recipe that brings saffron into the picture. The cruciferous personality of cauliflower, both in taste and smell, seems to blend extremely well with the distinctive flavor and aroma of saffron. I enjoyed this with some seared wild tuna but you could easily add in some legumes, sprouts, and-or vegetables for a vegan entree.