What would be a list of kitchen princples if at least one didn't address WHAT we eat, in terms of nutritional value?! After all, that is the end goal, right?! I know it is for me. Well, that AND taste. Yum!
So, kitchen principle number five is (drumroll please...)
Whole Foods, Natural Colors, and Can You Tell Where it Came From?!
As I've delved and dabbled in the various nutrition forums, I've been turned off sometimes by the complexity or the extremism. It seems that we'd all become anorexic if we embraced every concept of food safety and tried to avoid anything that's ever been nay-sayed by any group. I'm not vegan, vegetarian, raw, or gluten-free, though I value what these groups bring to the table (ha, ha, get it?) and I own recipe books of such authors. And sometimes I trade money for food at a drive-thru window.
Overall, I wanted to simplify and make it possible to go ahead and keep eating but be aware of what we're stuffin' down the ol' cake hole -- and try to make sure it's not too much cake.
Whole Foods: this is NOT an endorsement of a particular place to shop. This means focusing on foods that haven't been processed beyond recognition. If we were to visit a wheat field, it would be brown. Therefore, it makes sense for bread to be brown. Eating foods in states fairly close to how they were grown is ideal.
I'm not encouraging a completely raw diet, but it sure simplifies life to realize that you don't have to cook every vegetable before you eat it! I'm not a great chef, and I've embraced that about myself, and go ahead and pat myself on the back for making sure we have dark leafy greens at dinner every night -- even if it's simply spinach. Kids can add dressing!
Natural Colors: these key words steer me away from many, many products at the grocery store... like Fruit Snacks. And instead, we end up eating real fruit! Most of the real fruit we eat is not neon, like fruit snacks tend to be.
Can You Tell Where it Came From? This phrase simply helps my children with the first two phrases -- a simple question they can ask themselves (and answer?) to determine if it's a whole food or so incredibly processed that they have no idea what the ingredients might be. For the ones who can read, I also teach them to read the labels on boxed foods... if there's an ingredient they can't pronounce or that doesn't get used in a regular kitchen like our own, that's a red-flag-warning that they are about to consume something that might turn around and consume them back!
That reminds me of a funny song -- "Ghost Chickens In the Sky" by moosebutter! Enjoy during dinner!
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