A Free nutritional analysis for you.

Most of us need to improve our health in some way or another and could stand to feel better as well. Most of us try to eat well, but what if the very things you were eating because you thought they were healthy were not the best for YOU in particular?




If you are stuck healthwise this may be the case. But how to figure out what you should be eating, this is a puzzle even for most health professionals.



So I was excited to find a free online nutritional typing test from Dr. Mercola as well as a cook book to go with it!







Here is the link!







http://products.mercola.com/nutritional-typing/







Have fun and hope it improves your health!

Thai Coconut Chili Chicken

This dish is easy, quick and very tasty as well.  I am in love with Thai dishes, but have found some of them rather involved, I love a dish I can make quickly and still have the wonderful Thai taste, this is one of those.


1 lb or so of cut up chicken ( tenders or thighs boneless)
5 cloves of crushed or diced garlic
2-3 T coconut oil
1 10oz cup of bamboo shoots drained.
1 t or so of sucanat or organic cane juice or granulated honey
1 1/2 t of chili paste
1 green onion cut up in small pieces
All of the white part of a leek sliced in thin rings and separated and 5 thin slices of the green top.

First cut up all ingredients, as you are almost done cutting, begin heating a wok or cast iron skillet over a med high heat.

 Once it is hot enough to make a drip of water dance, add  the coconut oil.  Then add in the chicken and the garlic.  Stir fry until chicken is cooked through and garlic is fragrant.

Then add in the bamboo shoots ( drained) heat though. While that is heating combine the fish sauce, sugar or sucanat or honey and chili paste and mix together.  Then add these to the skillet or wok.

Heat through and add in the remaining ingredients. 

Stir fry for about a minute and serve.

Optional-  May also add in a couple of T of coconut milk, or 6 fresh mint leaves or 1/4 of a red pepper.  If you add the coconut milk or mint leaves add at the end with the remaining ingredients.  If you add the red pepper add at the same time as the bamboo shoots.

Wow this salad is not just good it's down right addicting!

Well, sorry don't even have a picture of this one.....I made it last night with no planning, no recipe just out of my head and it turned out so good that we had it eaten completely before I could even think to photograph it, so you will just have to take my word for it and I will load a pic the next time I make it, which will be for a design workshop I am participating in this weekend.


Italian Pasta Summer Salad ( Wheat free!)

1 8 oz package of spelt or rice Penne or corkscrew spiral pasta cooked according to directions and rinsed and cooled

1 8 oz package of Feta cheese crumbled, including any juices

4-5 T of olive oil

1 Large cucumber

1-2 carrots grated

3 large tomatoes

Sea salt to taste

5 Pepperoncini Peppers

Juice from the Pepperoncini

1 small can of chopped olives

1 purple shallot cut up very fine.


To make-

boil and prepare pasta according to directions or cook as much as a minute less than the package directions, be careful not to over cook.  Once cooked, drain immediately and rinse in cold water and put into fridge while you work on other ingredients

Chop tomatoes into large chunks.  Peel cucumber in strips leaving strips of dark green peel on.  Then chop into large chunks. Cut Shallot up very very fine. Grate carrots, if possible not with a fine grater. Cut Pepperoncinis into small small pieces.

Dump these veggies into a large serving bowl and add to the bowl the crumbled Feta and juices, add the olive oil, add sea salt and also pour in several tablespoons of the juice from the Pepperoncinis.  Last of all add in pasta and mix.  Taste and add more sea salt and pepperoncini juice to taste.  Chill and serve if you can resist not eating it all on the spot.

This will also work nicely with adding in spinach.  To do this take a standard package of chopped frozen spinach.  Thaw and squeeze out excess liquid and add.  I have made a similar salad with spinach in the past.

This recipe is fast and really really good, nice in summer, easy to double and can be an entire meal.  You could also add in salami to make it even more like a meal and I believe it would do well with garbanzo beans too, but have to try it with both to tell you for sure.

Hope you like it as much as I do!

A "Berry" Healthy shake- and the beginning of my journey with raw foods.

In the last few months I have begun to make real effort to make at least 70% of what I eat in any given day raw food.   Some days I accomplish this and more and some days it's likely more like 45-50%.  However I usually am around 70% which is much more than many people.

Now mind you I have eated "healthy" for a long time.  I changed my life and my health completely with changing my diet nearly17 years ago.  But when a friend started sharing her journey with raw foods I realized that I had a ways to go.  First I just started to pay attention to what I was eating and if it was raw or not.  When I did this I realized, wow, I am eating almost all cooked food.  ( not junk, lots of veggies, lots of lean protein, whole grains so on.) However most of it was cooked.  Why is this an issue?  We raw foods have the enzymes in them to help you digest the food itself.   What if you cook it?  Then you don't have those enzymes any more so your body has to use enzymes it creates to digest instead of using the enzymes it creates for other things like repairing your body, and healing and such.  ( at least this is what the info I have read says)

So I started to increase my raw foods.  One of the easiest ways to do this is to make a raw shake in the morning instead of the S.A.D. ( standard American diet) breakfast.  I have discovered many great recipes doing this and most mornings I make something a little different each time.  What I did not know until I read more is it would not just be a great way to get my fruits, but also my veggies....




Berry Good For You Shake



1 small slice of beet
1/2 of medium carrot
1 med sized banana
1 egg
1/2 of a small zucchini
1 small slice off of a purple cabbage
4-6 frozen strawberries
1 handful of frozen black berries.
a pinch or so of stevia to taste
a little purified water ( just enough to make it blend nicely)

Wash and then put all of the above ( minus the egg shell of course) into your blender.  Continue to blend until it is all very very smooth, if you need to add a little water to make that work, do, but use it sparingly so that it does not get too slushy.

Now of course since this is a raw food recipe remember all the fruits and veggies are raw and so is the egg.  Also do your best to use only organic ingredients including for the egg.  This is the best tasting and the best
for you too.

Try it and see if you don't just feel great all day long!  I will post more raw food shakes shortly.

Things that get in the way of menu planning.....

Well this week has been interesting.....I did not get to shop on Saturday @ all,  I have 2 very sick little ones. My oldest got sick early in the week and seems to be in recovery fully, however the littlest ones caught it from him.  First our baby and then his next oldest sister.  ( His oldest sister has been spared so far since she was @ Grandma's for a week) 

Joeleah however and Peter are running very very high fevers, and coughing and Joeleah seems unable to keep anything other than Mama's milk down @ all.  This means no shopping for the time being.  Karl ran to the store, but came back with .....bacon, white bread and premade lasgna ( actually very helpful)

I seem to now be officially fighting it since I can hardly breathe....will see what I can prepare with what is in the house, will keep you posted.

Plantain Perfection

Ever wonder what in the world you are supposed to do with Plantains?  You know those things that look like very big bananas and cost a bit more?

Well here is a very very simple, but also very very good recipe!


2 Plantains

3 tblspns butter

Cinnamon to taste



Heat a skillet ( I prefer cast iron) on a med heat.  while it is heating, cut up the plantains into slightly angled    slices ( so that they are oval shaped) . Add butter to heated skillet, add cinnamon, sprinkling over plantains.  Put plantains into skillet and cook over med heat until cooked through.  Serve warm.

Very good and very easy!

(Matsunaga) Family Fried Rice

Do you ever have left overs, or trouble getting your kids to eat veggies?  If you answered yes to either one, or just want a great easy to please dish that works at least in an Asian household ( and I don't see why not any other one) as your choice of a breakfast, lunch or dinner, main dish, side dish or snack...then THIS is the recipe for you.

I have made this for over 23 years, it is never quite the same two times and it just keeps getting better, I will save you 23 years of improving and just take you to where we are now....

Family Fried Rice-

Ingredients-

1-2 Table spoons of bacon drippings
1 onion chopped
3 large broccoli stems chopped ( no florets)
2-3 carrots cut into tiny cubes or into coins or matchsticks- ( your choose)
2 small or 1 med zucchini cut into small pieces-half or 1/4 coins or cubes or matchsticks
1/2-1 cup frozen peas
1 small yellow squash cut same as zucchini
1/4 of a small red/purple cabbage
1/2 red bell pepper
Sea salt to taste, a small amount
Bragg's liquid aminos or Chinese soy sauce - again a small amount, start with a teaspoon or less
Long grain cooked brown rice between 2-3 cups
Your choice of meats already cooked and cubed unless it's small shrimp
2-3 eggs
butter or olive oil for cooking eggs
fresh pepper

To Make-

Start the night before you will make this by soaking 1.5-2 cups of brown long grain rice in 1 and a half times as much purified water. 

The next day pour water into rice cooker ( or if you don't have one drive to the nearest grocery store and purchase a cheap one, unless of course you are Asian and eat rice for pretty much breakfast, lunch and dinner in that case buy one that is a couple hundred dollars at least, but if this is the case you already HAVE one, there are also brown rice cookers that make it so you do not need to soak your brown rice prior to cooking to get good results, I just have not splurged yet!)  Cook the rice until done, then mix it up to finish with it's steaming and unplug the cooker and allow to cool, better yet if you have time, put it in the fridge so it is all the way cooled.

Then when you are ready to make the rest of the dish....go to your fridge, find any and all left over meat, ( steak, pork chops, chicken, shrimp, turkey, even hot dogs or lunch meat will do, but don't let the "authentic ethinic food police" find out.....) Chop this meat into small cubes.  If you do not have any left overs you can cook some up, but half the purpose of this dish is to use the left overs so....I think you should make it when you have them, it is part of what makes the recipe good too since you get the flavors of how ever you made the meat before in it, and the mix of several meats. The one I made last week had chicken, steak, porkchop and bacon in it.

Once you have cut these up, set them aside and cut up your veggies, just open your fridge and see what you have, if you have preplanned you can have any or all of the veggies I listed in the recipe, but if not use what you have.  The amounts do not have to exact.  When you are almost done chopping, heat a cast iron skillet up with either the bacon drippings or instead for better health use the same amount of olive or safflower oil with a bit of old hickory smoke salt, or just sea salt.  Then add the chopped veggies and pan fry until tender, start with the harder to cook up veggies like the carrots and broccoli stems and add things like peas that cook fast at the end.  While you are doing that also heat up your omlet pan and cook up your eggs after scrambling them in a dish flat on a preheated pre oiled/buttered pan.  When both are done add meat to veggies and cut up eggs and add them too. 

Last but not least add the rice and mix everything up.

Then when it is all mixed up and coated taste, add the braggs or soy sauce and sea salt very very slowly as needed.  Hint asian dishes only use soy sauce as a tiny bit of seasoning, not as a main flavoring....if in doubt skip it!  Top with a little fresh ground pepper, again taste as you go.

I love this dish because it helps my daughter who will hardly touch veggies eat them and it uses left overs and it is WAY more veggies than rice....


Other possible ingredients--

Scallops
green peppers
green onions
green cabbage
leeks
shallots
spinach stems
califlower
sausage

Ingredients are really only limited by your imagination and common sense and good taste...have fun and let me know how you like it!  I never make it exactly the same twice...no reason you should either!

P.S. Lee this is for you, I know you miss this dish lots....now you can make it and eat it for a week!