Cook Healthy Recipes
« Previous ArticlesHealthy cooking made easy
The secret to healthy cooking is quite simple: If you know how to cook healthy meals, you’ll be more inclined to cooking healthy foods in the first place!
Healthy cooking may seem to be a daunting task when you’ve never done it before, but there are some pretty easy tips to making healthy cooking a breeze.
If you keep in mind that you need to eat more real foods, raw foods, vegetables, fruits and whole grain and less of all those junk foods and frozen foods packed with salt, sugar and fat, you’ll be that much closer to eating healthy.
>>> Healthy cooking in 10 easy steps:
1. Eat more fruits and vegetables: The sad reality is that most people don’t get enough fruits of vegetables per day! Aim for 5 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Pick produce in a variety of colours to get a range of antioxidants and vitamins (the more colour you add to your diet, the more you increase your chance of getting the nutrients you need from your diet). Keep in mind that a serving size is 1⁄2 to 1 cup depending on the fruit or vegetable.
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Healthy comfort foods
Okay, so when you are craving comfort, which foods do you turn to?
Any rice dish is quite comforting to me but when I need a little extra TLC, I’ll make myself some plain old white Thai jasmine scented rice with a bit of sea salt and olive oil and I swear I can eat it out of the pan.
I am also quite the sucker for some good old mac & cheese. That said, I make my own mac & cheese and I have perfected this 15-minute recipes that is comforting and that doesn’t contain 1,000 calories.
Some people see pizza as comfort food, but it’s not the case for me since I like my pizza with an extra thin crust … it just doesn’t give me the comfy feeling mac & cheese or white rice does.
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Avocado salad recipe
Teri Gentes’ recipe for this avocado salad recipe is SO easy to prepare!
I really hope you learned a lot from my interview with Teri Gentes about calorie counting.
If you missed that interview, you can still catch it here:
>>> Can counting calories help you lose weight?
If you’re not eating avocados, you are missing out big time! They are a complete food and they are so versatile.
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BEST broccoli salad EVER!
***This broccoli salad is the best I’ve ever eaten!***
Not long ago, I attended an event for the one year anniversary of John Berardi’s Spezzatino magazine.
Spezzatino is a magazine on healthy eating that donates its proceeds to support healthy food banks (aka ensuring that food banks are able to give healthy foods to people who are in need and not only processed foods).
You’ll hear me talk more about Spezzatino very soon because I’m now a contributor and I’ll provide them with a few of my favourite healthy recipes and I’ll be tracking my food travels for them!
Oh, just in case you were wondering “what does spezzatino mean?”, it’s an Italian recipe and the first recipe that was published in the magazine. It was a contribution from publisher and business partner to John Berardi, Phil Caravaggio. The spezzatino recipe is so outrageously delicious (they were serving it at the event) that I had to beg to get my hands on it and I will be testing it in my kitchen soon.
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Pizza recipes to make your own homemade pizzas
I hope the previous post convinced you that making pizza at home is not all that complicated and it’s such a great way for you to watch the quality of the ingredients you put into your body.
I know that it’s easy to say open your fridge, pick a few ingredients and start making pizza!
For someone who’s been eating store-bought, frozen or delivered pizza, it might sound like painting the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City.
The great thing about making homemade pizza is that you really cannot mess up too much. It’s a dummy-proof recipe that even newbie cooks can proudly make.
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Make your own pizza at home
When I was still married, my Parisian-ex-husband and I loved to make pizza from scratch at home. I mean even the dough and the sauce were made from scratch.
I would take care of preparing the sauce and selecting and preparing the toppings, but he was the expert pizza dough maker.
I remember how much care and attention he used to place in preparing his dough.
Since my divorce, I still eat homemade pizza, but I buy the dough instead of making it myself because it’s a bit faster for those nights where I’m pressed for time.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are still Italian restaurants in my city that make pizzas that are mouthwatering delicious they make your eyes swell with tears of joy and when I have a huge craving for an oven baked thin crust pizza, I can head to one of the favourite spots: Bar Mercurio, Terroni or Ferro!
My favourite part of eating pizza at an Italian restaurant, other than eating a fresh and crunchy Italian tradition, is to top my pizza off with hot chili oil or very hot peppers like they offer at Terroni and Ferro!
I’ve documented my love for hot peppers in the past and if you’ve missed that post, you can still read it here: Why I will never gain weight!
I’m sure you must have a few restaurants in your city that make incredible thin crust Italian pizzas. I personally have never liked thick dough pizzas topped with heavy sauce and covered with mountains of cheese. Way back I used to work at one of the luxury department stores and when they used to have us stay for yearly inventory counts, they would order those pizzas. I ate because I needed to fill my stomach, but I never really enjoyed them at all. I even blotted some of the excessive oils from those pizzas with paper before eating them because there was soooooooooooo much cheese.
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Avocado Black Bean dip recipe
***This recipe is part of the Meatless Monday series. It’s easy to go meatless with a vegetarian dip recipe!***
If this is the first time you read about our weekly Meatless Monday feature, you can find out the reason why we’re featuring these vegetarian recipes by visiting this link to read the full story: Why not go meatless on Mondays?
This is another recipe that will keep you away from those bad-bad-bad fake Mexican restaurants that serve really fatty foods.
This is the kind of recipe that you can eat as a dip and you can also be used to fill a wrap and you can easily eat this recipe as an appetizer or a main course.
This recipe dip contains two forms of nutritious and vegetarian protein: black beans and avocado.
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Meatless Mondays: Brown Rice Bake recipe
*** This recipe is part of the Meatless Monday series. It’s easy to go meatless with a vegetarian rice-bake recipe!***
If this is the first time you read about our weekly Meatless Monday feature, you can find out the reason why we’re featuring these vegetarian recipes by visiting this link to read the full story: Why not go meatless on Mondays?
This will be the perfect dish for an evening meal and something you can quickly and easily bring to the office the next day for lunch.
If you cannot find the French Neufchantel cheese, why not try goat cheese and if you don’t like the taste of goat cheese you can also use cream cheese.
You’ll notice how deceiving this recipe is because it will look far more complicated than it is and will impress your entire family!
Continue reading: Meatless Mondays: Brown Rice Bake recipe »
