What’s For Dinner?

images-3In our fast paced world with all of the conveniences at our fingertips it’s hard to imagine having enough time to actually cook a nutritious meal that doesn’t have some ingredient that is processed. Many recipe’s today include opening a can of this or a box of that. I may be a cooking snob but when I see these things I usually discard the recipe unless I can make the ingredient fresh.

The media helps us in this thinking that we need nothing but convenience when it comes to our meals. I love the Olympics so I dusted off the TV and turned it on and really enjoyed the stories of the athletes and their competitions. What I didn’t enjoy is the bombardment of the media and their convenience foods. The Mom talking about how “toasted” she is at the end of the day so she stops by KFC and gets her family a meal.

I was thinking now she isn’t only toasted she’s fried too!!

With a little bit of planning it is not difficult to cook healthy meals with nutritious single ingredient simple foods. The best place to start is on the weekend, this is a great time to plan the weeks meals and strategize about how to make it more simple and convenient. Planning ahead will guarantee you will have all ingredients at hand and any prepping can be done ahead of time.

Todays meal is Cajun Chicken Gumbo so I planned ahead.
This take about 7 hours to cook in a slow cooker so the best part about it is that you put everything together and leave it. When you get home, dinner is cooked.

Last night because we had a planned out meal it was simple to chop up the onions, peppers, celery and garlic and seal it up in the fridge. Then this morning I took 15 minutes to make my roux and cook my sausage at the same time and drain. A small amount of Italian sausage is the only processed item in this recipe, Gumbo just isn’t the same without it. When it is pre-cooked and drained it is much healthier than cooking it in the gumbo like most recipe’s call for.

Another thing that I do for convenience is that I can organic chicken breast meat in jars. It is amazing for quick meals where chicken is called for. I only use it if time is an issue or there is no chicken on hand, it is an amazing time saver. I will go through the steps for you so you can learn how to can your own chicken in an upcoming blog but for now lets stick to the gumbo.

Shelli’s Cajun Chicken Sausage Gumbo:

1/3 cup Flour
1/3 cup Canola oil/ cooking oil
3 cup Water
12 OZ Cooked Italian Sausage
1 1/2 cup Cooked Shredded Chicken
1 cup Onion chopped
3/4 cup Sweet Green Pepper chopped
1/2 cup Celery chopped
6 cloves Garlic minced
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Black pepper
1/2 tsp crushed red peppers
3 cups cooked rice

Prep time 30 minutes
Cook time 7 hours

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To make roux: combine oil and flour in pan, cook on medium heat for about 15 minutes stirring constantly until it is a rich dark reddish brown color like the photo, set aside and let it cool (hint: take if off the heat before it is to the finish point and it will finish as the pan cools, make sure and stir it occasionally)
Cook and drain the sausage and cook and shred the chicken (or open a jar of home canned chicken)
Chop all vegetables.DSC_0176
Add 3 cups of water to a pan, add the roux, it will look like the photo

 

Add the sausage, chicken and vegetables and let it simmer all day.
When you get home it will be done. Serve over rice. it’s delicious!

 

Because dinner was so easy tonight, you can plan for tomorrows meal and prepare anything that needs to be chopped ahead of time.

A great hint if you don’t have a timer on your crock pot is to buy one for the wall and plug the crock pot into that, set the time for 7 hours and head off to work.

There is no substitute for fresh locally grown food that is cooked freshly delicious.

Bon Appetite!

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Sustainable Solutions For Lifestyle Disorders

Join us for an evening of wellness series and find out ways to sustain your health in our world today.

 

Our Main topic will be Sustainable Solutions for Lifestyle Disorders and what we can do to live a happier and Healthier life.

To Find out More Click Here


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A Day You Eat, Is an Exercise Day

On any day that you Actually eat, that my friend is an exercise day.

Got it?  Eat, exercise.  now, I don’t mean that you eat and exercise.  You have to plan out your day properly.  If you even just PLAN on eating you get your exercise done EARLY as possible.  Any one Planning on eating today?

I get this all the time……”I just can’t seem to get it done after work”…..I say get up early and get ‘er done!  Before your brain starts to reason with you why you absolutely can’t get it done.  You ever heard that voice before?  Yea, I know you have!

GET UP EARLIER for crying out loud.  If you are lucky you will will be 1/2 way to 3/4 through the work out before your brain wakes up and starts to give you all the reasons you CAN’T work out.

By that time you can slam the door on the negative thoughts and finish up in style!

You know what I found out?  It took me years of teaching, being at a gym, talking to the clients.  I found out…….

That voice with the reasons why not, get stronger throughout the day.  ya ever notice that one?

It takes the will of a super hero to get to the gym on some nights after work.  The car wants to head for the barn so you have to fight that AND the voice of reasons why you shouldn’t take time on your self. You get to the gym and you burn say 300 to 500 calories?

Okay, So…..Does anyone have any idea of how many calories equals a pound?

 3,500 calories. 

That sounds like a lot of calories.  I think it is, I consume maybe half of that.  Are you aware of what you consume?

We have this little burger joint in Portland.  The receipt has calorie information and I was very surprised  to see that a meal with 2 burgers, small fries and medium soft drink equaled 75% of a 2,000 calorie diet. What if you did something similar to this 3 times a day?  and then you snacked, had an extra pop, had desert after eating….get my drift?  Do you think you would exceed the 3,500 calories???

By the way…I have a rule, NEVER eat food that is delivered or can be delivered through a window.……there are exceptions but very few……

So now we talked about calorie input.  Understand although I am into fitness and I believe it is very important, 80% of everyone’s health is nutrition.

So we go to the gym, we are literally trying to work our ass off!  We tell our self we will do what ever it takes no matter what, even if we don’t like it……

That’s a story for another Blog!

Stay well my friends and stay tuned.  Another blog is on it’s way!

Find out where those Extra pounds come from

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