Think, Eat, Be Healthy

How Do I Eat At Home?

Orange red chile pork ribs with green peas, corn and pearl onions.

Orange red chile pork ribs with green peas, corn and pearl onions.

I try to adhere to a healthy whole food diet. To me this means getting rid of almost all crystallized cane sugar and white wheat flour, white rice, “ready to eat” foods in boxes or bags and all artificial colors, flavors and preservatives. I rarely wander into the center isles of any food store.

There is still some sugar and wheat flour in my diet, on the order of once or twice a month. I love to bake but am constantly experimenting with substitutes for white wheat flour and sugar for desserts with a lower glycemic index. Gluten does not seem to bother me and I love to bake bread, especially sourdough. I just have not been able to come up with bread recipes I really like that are less than 30% white flour. My favorite New Orleans style pound cake needs white all-purpose flour. Oh well. I don’t make them very often so it is a treat every time, not a regular part of the diet.

Fried pasture-raised eggs, lamb sausage, avocado and fresh mustard.

Fried pasture-raised eggs, lamb sausage, avocado and fresh mustard.

My breakfast varies a lot. Once or twice each week I like to have 2-3 sunny-up farm eggs with a link of chicken sausage, purple potatoes with onion, garlic and mushrooms and probably 1/2-avocado or some kimchi. More often breakfast will be cut oats, maybe with some millet, quinoa or barley thrown in along with a variety of dried fruits and a splash of cream. Other days I will have fresh fruit with goat kefir, topped with cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. At least once each week I do a one-day fast: I drink only water or lemon water from dinner to dinner.

Mid-day, including lunch, is usually a very slow and continual graze of mostly raw fruits, vegetables and nuts.

Thin sliced herbed pork loin roast with buttered spaghetti squash and lemon brown rice.

Thin sliced herbed pork loin roast with buttered spaghetti squash and lemon barley.

Dinner is my usual splurge meal. I have more time but still average less than 45 minutes preparation time per meal. There is more likely to be a protein main-stay on the plate. Dinner is also the most likely meal to have a conventional simple starch such as potato, bread, rice, pasta or polenta. The most common items will always be complex carbohydrates like steamed broccoli, stir-fried mixed vegetables, roasted root vegetables and the like. Green salads are common, with a variety of raw and cooked vegetable toppings and sometimes a protein. I eat a lot of dried beans, a few servings at least every few days.

I constantly try new hot and cold salads using hulled barley, millet, quinoa, kamut and other whole grains.

kimchi, sauerkraut, fermented, fermented vegetables, fermented food, fermented cabbage, spicy fermented cabbage

Fermented foods like kimchi, red sauerkraut and green sauerkraut are whole foods with their nutrition enhanced by bacterial action. They have the added benefit of being pro-biotic digestive aides that also keep the immune system strong.

There is some kind of raw fermented food on the menu nearly every day. It might be kefir or yogurt or cheese, or sauerkraut or pickled beets. I believe these living fermented foods provide an important boost to our digestive and immune systems.

There is often an evening snack an hour or so before bed. This will most often be fresh fruit, sometimes with kefir or yogurt and spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Sometimes I will have oatmeal with dried fruit.

 

Grass fed lamb tacos on 100% whole wheat tortillas.

Grass fed lamb tacos on 100% whole wheat tortillas.

Mostly I strive for a wide variety of healthy whole foods in my diet every day and every week. Eat different colors, different families of plants, whole grains, legumes, grass-fed dairy, nuts, eggs and an assortment of meats and fishes. It is good(and healthy) to not be overly dependent on any small group of foods and there is hardly anything that I eat every day. Keep mixing it up and exploring new foods and preparations to keep boredom out of your diet.