Vegetables are your lifeline to good health, especially a variety of colors, both cooked and raw. But which ones are better cooked or better raw? I’ll keep it simple. Some vegetables should be cooked to get the most benefits. Some not so much. Heat destroys vitamin C but heat helps your body absorb vitamin A. What should we do? It can be confusing so here is my own take on it:
BETTER COOKED:
Tomatoes
Spinach
Carrots
Collard greens
Swiss chard
Broccoli – short steaming (3-4 minutes) preserves its cancer-fighting compounds
Cabbage – easier to digest, cooking still provides some cancer fighting compounds
Mushrooms
Kale for mineral absorption
Bell peppers for vitamin A
Green beans
BETTER RAW:
Leafy salad greens
Bell peppers for vitamin C
Broccoli for cancer fighting compounds (who eats raw broccoli?? 🤮)
Cabbage – raw cabbage has more cancer fighting compounds
Cruciferous vegetables (cauliflower, bok choy, Brussels sprouts, etc.)
Beets (again, who eats raw beets??)
Kale for vitamin C
STILL GOOD EITHER WAY:
Bell peppers
Cabbage
Cauliflower and other cruciferous vegetables
Broccoli
Kale
Beets (cooked beets provide betacarotene and are more digestible when cooked)
Most vegetables need fat to absorb efficiently so my salads always have lots of heart healthy olive oil and sometimes avocado or nuts. I also drizzle extra olive oil on most pasta dishes. Steaming is generally the best way to cook most vegetables, retaining a lot of their nutrients. Roasting is my next choice but boiling is the least optimal way to cook any vegetable, except in soup, chili or stew where you consume the liquid.
*Several reputable sources are reporting that to gain the most benefits from cooked cruciferous vegetables, you should chop them 40 minutes before cooking to activate the beneficial enzymes. I don’t know if I’d have the time… ⏰
I hope this helps. I eat lots of vegetables in lots of colors. In fact, every meal I cook starts with what vegetables are in the fridge. Then I build the rest of the meal on that. When I serve a colorful plate of food, I ask my husband, “How beautiful are these vegetables?” He always replies, “Not as beautiful as you.” 😍❤️😍❤️😍❤️ Awwwww… (or he’s just angling for me to make brownies. 🤔)
Here’s a closing poem:
Bake them or steam them, or roast in a pan, Eat lots of veggies, as many as you can.
Mix up the colors, you’ll benefit more, You’ll look and feel way better than before.
If you take my advice, if you do as you should, Your friends will all say… “Bitch, you look good!” 😀
I realize my lifestyle may seem extreme but it’s really just routine to me, not a hardship at all. But if it seems overwhelming, here are five small changes anyone can make towards better health. No step is too small to make a difference:
Reduce or eliminate soft drinks. There is nothing redeeming in these beverages and even worse are diet sodas. You could start by adding sparkling water to a variety of fruit juices. Orange juice with sparkling bubbly water is good, or start with a flavored bottled water but beware of “zero calories” which usually means artificial chemical sweeteners. I would rather have a drink with sugar than artificial sweeteners. If you’re hooked, try diluting your soda with sparkling water as a first step.
Vegetables With Every Meal. Vegetables, especially cooked vegetables, are your lifeline to good health. So no matter what you’re having for lunch or dinner, make sure there is some vegetable with each meal (preferably more than one). At home, a steamer makes this really easy. I routinely steam carrots, beets, zucchini, Brussels sprouts, green beans, broccoli, sweet potatoes, and cauliflower. I add them on the side with casseroles and pasta dishes. When eating out, if your meal doesn’t include veggies, most restaurants have side orders of vegetables you can add and share at the table.
Make your own salad dressing. You are eating salads, right? 🙂 You don’t need the store-bought dressing when it’s so easy to make your own with heart-healthy, vital olive oil. Just stir it up with any vinegar of your choice or fresh lemon juice with some herbs, mustard if you like, salt & pepper. You can make it on the spot as needed or make it in a jar to keep refrigerated, like I do. Olive oil has numerous health benefits and is also great for your skin. (p.s. I just looked up a popular Ranch dressing – 😳 it has MSG and other things I can’t pronounce! 👎)
Learn to love dark chocolate. I like this part because I like sweets. I used to enjoy milk chocolate but knowing the health benefits of 70% dark chocolate, I learned to like it and now I love it. I started with bars with more cacao, from 40-50-60% and eventually 70%, which is where the heart health comes in. I love 70% dark chocolate and now I use it to make my own cashew or almond clusters. Don’t try too hard! 80 and 90% chocolate is a tough sell! Stick to 70% for the best taste and its many healthy benefits.
Eat less sugar. This is a challenge for me because I love sweets! But I’m working on reducing my sugar and you can too. I’m baking my cookies smaller or have half a cookie for dessert. You don’t have to give up ice cream, just eat less (and never out of the carton! 🥄) I rarely bake cakes any more and most of my desserts are a small cookie or one or two of my dark chocolate clusters. When eating out, when I had a fancy, rich dessert, I always felt overloaded. These days, I don’t even want it. So now we split dessert, if we have it at all. Going out for ice cream or gelato? Ask for a child’s portion or ask for a smaller serving. We go for gelato occasionally, and I just say, “That’s enough right there.” I enjoy the treat and feel better afterwards.
p.s. My husband then asks if he can have the part of gelato that I didn’t get! This is what I have to deal with…. ❤️❤️
You know how I’m always making my dark chocolate cashew clusters? I just thought it was a healthy sweet treat considering the health benefits of dark (70%) chocolate and the protein from the cashews. Plus, I keep them refrigerated and cashews stay softer than almonds. So last night, I saw an article about my favorite snack! It turns out that cashews are a perfect balance of carbs, protein, fat and fiber that helps prevent blood sugar spikes. That’s even more reason to make my dark chocolate cashew clusters.
p.s. Cashews must be toasted first! I buy them raw and dry-roast at 350 until they’re light brown (about 12-15 minutes) and they taste much better than store-bought toasted ones.
I’ve always believed that it’s more about what I DON’T eat than what I DO eat that keeps me healthy. You can eat lots of broccoli but it you follow it with a can of Pilsbury crescent rolls, that little doughboy will haunt you in your sleep! 😀 Here’s what’s not in this kitchen:
No Soft drinks
No Fruit juice
No Energy drinks
No Beer
No Wine
No Alcohol
No Store-bought salad dressing
No Cured meats or sausages (*see exception posted Dec. 1st.⬆)
No Ultra-processed foods
This story was all over the news yesterday. ➡ ➡ “Ultra-processed foods are linked to chronic health conditions like obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, chronic kidney disease and overall higher death rates. Common examples of ultra-processed foods include sugar-sweetened beverages, packaged snacks, instant soups, breakfast cereals, energy bars, mass-produced packaged breads, ready-to-eat meals, ice cream and pizza.” (Ice cream and pizza!? That’s just sad!! 😭)
But don’t fret. Almost all of these foods can be made at home to be enjoyed so you don’t have to give them up, just make them yourself. I make my own snacks, soups, granola bars, breads, meals, and pizza and I encourage everyone to do the best you can to avoid processed food. Read labels. If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it.🤓
Oh… more things that are not in my kitchen: Cheese Whiz, Spam, Pringles, Ding Dongs, Twinkies or Funyuns! (…but you knew that ❤️).
For anyone curious, there’s lots of empty space on the shelves of my refrigerator but the vegetable drawers at the bottom are standing room only. Why don’t I start with what’s always on the shelves in my fridge:
Container of crudité (carrots, cabbage chunks, radishes)
Container of cut papaya or mango
Milk
Eggs
Buttermilk
Mayonnaise (avocado-based)
My butter-mix
Avocado oil
Champagne vinegar
Homemade salad dressing
A few mini apples
Granola bars
Four containers of nuts (almonds, walnuts, cashews, and pistachios)
Dark chocolate cashew clusters
Homemade peanut butter and almond butter
Container of apple bread or lemon blueberry loaf (depending on season)
Blueberry and blackberry jam
Low sodium soy sauce
Mustard
Pickles
And down in the crisper drawers, I always keep….
2 kinds of lettuce (usually romaine and red leaf)
Cabbage
Carrots
Celery
Onion
Radicchio
Granny Smith apples for baking
Iceberg lettuce for sandwiches
Baby spinach
Broccoli
Bell peppers
I buy other vegetables when needed for a certain recipe like zucchini, green beans, Swiss chard, beets, or Brussels sprouts (don’t make a face! 🤢) You don’t have to love Brussels sprouts but put on your big boy apron and cook them! 🙂 They’re one of the top cancer-fighting vegetables you can eat. Next post, I’ll talk about what’s NOT in my fridge and why…
If this looks like the perfect apple, it might be too good to be true. Apples in their natural state are not glossy. So if you see an apple like this red delicious, don’t take a bite just yet. It might be like snacking on a candle because some apples are coated with wax to keep them fresh longer. It’s called “food-grade wax” but I’m not buying it. That’s like saying, “food-grade dirt.” It won’t kill you but do you want to swallow a spoonful of dirt? How about a spoonful of wax in your stomach?
I love red delicious apples and bought a few last week. When I ate the first one, I had a hard time chewing the skin. I couldn’t remember red delicious skin being so hard to eat. Then I remembered reading about wax on apples and I was sure this apple was coated so I decided to try removing it. I scraped it with a small paring knife and was shocked to see how much wax came off this small 3-inch apple.
Imagine how much is on a big apple! So when you see a glossy, shiny apple, it just takes a second to scrape it once with a knife to test for wax. No wax? Enjoy the apple and the skin, which has more nutrients than the inside. If you see wax, you can scrape it off with a knife or you can drop the apple into boiling water for 5 seconds to melt the wax, then rub it off with a coarse towel. Keep the wax away and eat an apple a day. 🍎
Now more than ever we all need a strong immune system. I’m highlighting some important foods that can help keep us all strong and healthy. Although healthy when eaten fresh, red peppers, carrots, and spinach provide even more nutrients when cooked. Below you will find some specific easy recipes that each incorporate at least one of these immune boosting foods.
I just read an eye-opening article saying it’s not the bad stuff we’re eating but the good stuff we are NOT eating that poses a bigger threat to our health. It’s from a 27-year global study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. One in five deaths, no matter where people lived, occurred because of too much sodium and a lack of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, calcium, fiber, legumes or beans, and healthy fats found in salmon, vegetable oils and some nuts and seeds. Hey! I eat a lot of that stuff!
This chart shows the 15 risk factors with #1 being the highest risk. In the USA it’s not enough whole grains followed by not enough nuts and seeds. I’m proud to say that a lot of my breads and cookies have those things.
Look what I found at the market today! Swiss chard is usually mostly green but today it was an explosion of vibrant color and you know what that means? Even more nutrients!
Designer shoes on sale or hot pink Swiss chard – guess which one gets me excited? I was so excited I rushed home to make my spaghetti with chard for dinner. It’s my favorite pasta side dish and I had it with salmon patties.
The chard is sauteed with some garlic and olive oil, add some Parmesan, stir in the spaghetti and it’s done. Ten minutes. Like all leafy greens, Swiss chard has many health benefits.
If you want to try my easy spaghetti with Swiss chard, click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
The short answer is yes. Warm liquids, such as soup or tea do help relieve cold symptoms but chicken soup is a better choice. Here’s why:
A compound found in chicken soup (carnosine) helps the body’s immune system to fight the early stages of a cold or flu.
Soup contains anti-inflammatory properties that help reduce a cold’s miserable side effects.
The soup’s salt, steam and heat can also help thin mucus, making it easier to expel. The steam also soothes irritated passageways in your nose and throat.
Soups are also hydrating, which is particularly important when fighting off an infection. Staying hydrated is key to recovery and salty, chicken soup is packed with electrolytes that may help retain even more fluids than water or commercial electrolyte drinks.
Warm soup or other liquids can help open up sinuses, relieving congestion and shortening the time the virus is in contact with the lining of your nose. The faster you can move the mucus through you nose, the better.
Make chicken-noodle or chicken-rice soup or just sip it as a healing broth. If you would like my recipe for healthy, homemade chicken soup click here. – Jenny Jones
